


Moments: Hawaii Five-O Oneshots

by Brumeier



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-30
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-11 02:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 51,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here you will find a random oneshots in the Hawaii Five-0 universe. No telling what they'll be - episode tags, AUs, missing scenes, random bits of fluff, who knows. SLASH is very probable, so be warned, cause I love me some McDanno. Rated mature just in case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Been Thinkin' 'Bout You

Exhaustion wars with pain, but the rhythmic swaying of the truck gives exhaustion the edge. Steve fades in and out of consciousness, lying on the bed of the truck like a sack of potatoes, hands tied in front of him. He is grateful not to be hanging by his arms anymore, grateful his guards don’t feel the need to inflict more pain on him during the trip because everything hurts and throbs and he just needs a little respite. His eyes close and he drifts away.

 _It wasn’t for nothing_. Jenna’s last words follow him back to consciousness and he blinks blearily at his guard. She’d been wrong. The pin she’d passed him had facilitated his escape and, _God_ , he’d tasted fresh air for all of ten seconds before he got clocked in the head, because Wo Fat was smarter and he’d been waiting. Now Steve is certain he’ll never see home again. He blew his one chance and the adrenalin that had been keeping him upright is long gone. The truck sways and his eyes close.

 

_Steve and Danny sit out on the lanai, watching Gracie build a sand castle. He likes to pretend, on days like this, that they’re a real family, and Gracie calls him Dad instead of Uncle Steve. It’s something he feels he’ll never have, not on his own, not with the way things are in his life right now. So he never says no when Danny offers to share his precious visitation time, and when Gracie pulls him down the beach to help her jump waves, he goes with a big, goofy grin on his face. He never talks about it with Danny, but he suspects his partner already knows. He usually does, for the important things anyway._

_“Wake up, Steve.”_

 

Steve feels a little nauseous when he opens his eyes again, and it takes his pain-hazed mind a long minute to realize that the truck is driving backwards. He struggles to put some meaning to this, but the best he can figure is that there must’ve been something blocking the road.

He has no idea where Wo Fat is taking him. He wishes he knows who or what Shelburne is so that at least he’ll die protecting the information. The way things are looking right now, he’ll be dying for nothing and his body will be left to rot in the jungle. Danny will never know what happened to him. That should be enough to motivate him, to get him looking for a moment when he can slip away, but apathy has settled over him like shroud.

Wo Fat planned this all too well, has anticipated Steve’s every move. And Steve is smart enough to know there’ll be no rescue. He’s on an unsanctioned mission in a hostile foreign country and no-one knows for sure where he is. Danny will go through the proper channels, of course, but despite his best efforts no-one will help him create an international incident just to rescue one rogue reservist who suffered a fatal lack of judgment.

Steve wishes he had time to say a proper farewell to his partner. _I’ll think about you the whole time_ was supposed to have been a joke, but it was the truth. Thoughts of Danny fill his head, memories of moments that he should’ve appreciated more while they were happening. He’d give anything for one of Danny’s rants right now, just to hear the sound of his voice.

 

_“Why does it always have to be you? Why do you have to put on the cape and go to North Korea? Do you even know what happens to people there? Stuff that’s not good, I can tell you that. I can’t believe you fell for Jenna’s line of bullshit. Don’t you have some SEAL sixth sense for stuff like this? Did you even check her story out before you hopped on a plane? No, you did not. I swear, you’re like a marshmallow on the inside, you melt for a pair of puppy eyes and a sad tale of woe. Yes, I said woe._

_“Honest to God, Steven, if you die over there I’ll never forgive you. You think I want to be stuck in this pineapple-infested hell hole without you? Did you even give that a thought before you agreed to this crazy-ass plan? No, you did not. Just once, could you not be the big action hero? I don’t care what righteous intentions you think you had, this is unacceptable McGarrett._

_“And for God’s sake, wake the fuck up!”_

 

Steve snaps awake and notices immediately that the truck has stopped moving. He registers the sound of automatic weapons and wonders what fresh new hell this is. Are Wo Fat’s men turning on him, or have they been attacked by a rival militant group?

If death is coming, he isn’t going to face it lying here like a landed trout. Steve pushes himself upright, grunting at the pain that lances through him as he moves. By the time he’s semi-upright he’s having trouble breathing and he’s sweating like a pig. His guard is gone and it would be an opportune time to slip out of the truck and disappear into the jungle. But he knows in his condition he won’t make it five feet before collapsing. Wo Fat has beaten him, both literally and figuratively, and even a rueful chuckle hurts.

All too soon the firing stops and Steve waits. If Wo Fat’s men were taken out, the new guys will search the vehicles. They’ll find him, sooner or later, and he doubts they’ll see much use for him. He wishes he could apologize to Danny, and the rest of his team. They stuck by him through all the crazy shit he’d done and are as much his family now as Mary.

 _Mary_. What will happen to her now? She’ll be all alone. Well, no. Danny will keep an eye on her because that’s the kind of guy he is. Maybe his partner will have better luck keeping her out of trouble. And isn’t it funny how just the knowledge that Danny will take care of things makes him relax? 

Steve can hear someone approaching the back of the truck, and knows this is it for him. The flap lifts and he closes his eyes against the sudden flash of sunlight, but not before he sees the gun. Maybe he should just keep his eyes closed; just this one time he doesn’t have to man up, because who will know anyway? He’s confused when he hears Danny’s voice, wonders if he’s hallucinating.

“Hey, Steve! I’ve got Steve, he’s alive!”

Steve looks up, incredulous, and there’s his partner dressed uncharacteristically in black and carrying an automatic weapon. Danny, here in North Korea, pulling off an improbable rescue. There’s a lot he wants to say at that moment, while his partner goes to work on the knots around his wrists, but what comes out is, “Danny. Where’s Wo Fat?”

Because Wo Fat is still a threat, if he hasn’t already been neutralized. He so casually killed Jenna, and surely he knows how much more important Danny is to him. Steve can survive a lot, but Danny being killed like that, like it was nothing, would end him. 

“Just shut up, would ya?” Danny says roughly, all his focus on those knots like he’s afraid to look Steve in the eye.

Before Steve can comment, the truck flap is lifted again and two more familiar faces are looking in at him; Chin and Joe, beaming happily. His own feelings kind of overwhelm him then and he can only stare at them blankly. And then he has to move and the pain reasserts itself, swamping him and blocking out everything else. He has flashes of being dragged through the jungle, his brutalized shoulders painfully stretched between the friends who support him, but mostly he just floats in a haze of unrelenting agony until suddenly he’s sitting on the floor of an old Huey, holding a gun and surrounded by friends and members of SEAL Team Nine.

He looks up at Danny, back braced against Joe’s legs, and wants to tell him so much. Wants Danny to touch him, the way Joe keeps patting his shoulder, or yell at him, or something. But his partner just looks at him, face shuttered, and looks away. “No, don’t. You can thank me when we get back to Oahu.”

He’s a little hurt and confused by that, not sure what it means that Danny is acting this way. Then Chin makes his wedding announcement and Danny gives him grief and everyone is laughing and it’s all so _normal_. Despite his pain and exhaustion and confusion, despite the fact that Wo Fat got away _again_ , he can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. He’s going home.

*o*o*o*

Steve has a hard time believing he’s in his bed, in his house, with the achingly familiar sound of the waves on the beach drifting through his open window. It’s all a little surreal, and he knows it’s not just from the painkillers they gave him at the hospital. Less than twenty-four hours ago he was certain he was going to die. Now he’s curled up between clean sheets and feeling more than a little afraid to fall asleep just in case this is all a pain-induced hallucination.

“Hey, Superman. How are you even still conscious?” Danny asks from the doorway. He’s wearing a pair of dark blue sweat pants, presumably from the suitcase of clothes he brought over and dumped in the spare room. He’s personally taken charge of Steve, refusing to go back to his place, and Steve can’t help but be incredibly thankful. His laundry list of injuries is long and varied, and he’d never be able to manage on his own. How Danny was even able to get him out of a lengthy hospital stay he can’t even begin to guess, though he suspects the Governor might have been involved.

“Dunno,” he replies, and his speech sounds as sluggish as he feels. “Never got to say thanks.”

Danny runs a hand over his face and Steve can see how tired he is. His partner must’ve run himself ragged trying to get him help and putting together a rescue so quickly. A simple thank you will never be enough.

“Wouldn’t be much of a partner if I just left you out there, now would I?” He comes over and sits on the other side of the bed, propped up against the headboard. “Admittedly, I had to assemble a team and you probably could’ve just parachuted in with nothing but a pen knife and saved the day, but hey. Not all of us have super powers.”

Danny tries for light banter but even in his sleep-deprived and medicated state Steve can hear the fear beneath the words, and the self-recrimination; as if what he did was any less heroic because he didn’t do it alone.

“You did good,” he says, wincing a little as he shifts position. “It was a good rescue.”

“If we’d gotten there sooner, we could’ve saved Jenna. And caught Wo Fat.”

Steve reaches over and puts his hand on Danny’s knee, something he can only accomplish thanks to a judicious application of muscle relaxants. “Don’t start with the what-ifs, Danny. Jenna was dead the second she agreed to help Wo Fat.”

“I wanted to kill her myself,” his partner says, voice flat and eyes staring at the far wall. “When we realized what she’d done, I wanted to kill her.”

Steve silently commiserates; he’d been pissed off and disappointed in her too, but watching her die in front of him had been horrible. Still, all he feels for her now is pity. Such a waste. 

“She asked me what I’d have done in her place,” he says.

Danny looks down at him, his expression stormy. “You wouldn’t have done what she did and don’t try to tell me otherwise. You’d have found another way, sacrificed yourself before you used someone like that. And just for the record, if you _ever_ do something like that I will personally feed you to hungry sharks.”

Steve’s lips quirk up in a half smile but he nods dutifully, and silence stretches between them. He doesn’t point out that Danny nearly sacrificed himself, put himself in a situation that very well could’ve left Gracie without her father. That he’d done that for Steve is so completely overwhelming that he knows he can never speak of it. But he’ll never forget it, just as he’ll never forget the memory of Danny at the back of that truck, calling his name.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Steve whispers.

“Hey, now, none of that.” Danny puts his hand over Steve’s, still on his knee; his own voice is thick with emotion. “You’re safe, I’m safe, and we both need to get some sleep.”

Steve wants to ask him to stay, and not just because of the dreams he’s afraid may come, but he can’t bring himself to say the words. Danny has already done so much, gone above and beyond for him. Not to mention that he’s so dopey and messed up right now that he’s feeling a little like the girl in their partnership and not in a funny ha-ha way.

Danny, though, has his six like always. He gets up to turn out the light and then slides right back in Steve’s bed, stretching out on his side so they’re facing each other.

“I’m right here in case you need anything, okay?” he says. Steve suddenly thinks that maybe Danny needs the closeness as much as he does.

Using darkness to cover the flush on his cheeks, Steve scoots a little closer to his partner. His fractured ribs protest but he studiously ignores the pain; he excels at that. 

“Thanks, Danno,” he murmurs.

“Go to sleep you big goof,” Danny replies. He gently strokes the side of Steve’s face, a hairline to chin motion that he’s used on Gracie to help her fall asleep. Steve decides it feels a thousand times better than it looked, and soon his eyes droop shut. He can sleep now, knowing Danny is here to watch over him.

“I really did think about you the whole time.”

“Me too,” Danny says softly. “Now will you please go to sleep, or do I have to get a tranquilizer gun? Because honestly? After what you’ve put me through it would be very satisfying to shoot you.”

And even on the edge of oblivion Steve can hear the warm affection in his tone. It’s a good feeling, knowing someone else cares enough about him to risk their own life to save his, and he resolves to cut back on some of his more reckless behavior.

Steve takes a breath and without meaning to “love you” slips out on the exhale. He falls asleep in the next second, missing the kiss his partner presses to his forehead.

“Danno loves you too. Sweet dreams.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** I have recently become a big Hawaii Five-0 fangirl. I fall firmly in the McDanno camp – love the relationship between those two characters and how well they play off each other. This is my first fic for the fandom and it just kind of popped into my head fully-formed and refused to be ignored.
> 
> Loved this ep when I saw it, which was just this week. I could probably write a slew of fics just from everything that happened in it, but I won’t. ::grins::
> 
> So, this was going to be a oneshot and then I was going to get back to my regularly scheduled Sentinel programming. But then another bunny popped in, and I was too tired to argue with it. So now I’ll have a little place to put all these random H50 fics. Can’t promise how many there’ll be though.
> 
> Reviews are always appreciated, and thank you for reading!


	2. Burning

Steve is in the car, resting his head against the seat and trying not to fall asleep, when the convenience store explodes into a ball of orange flame. He’s out of the car without any conscious thought at all, running as fast as he can towards the conflagration. There’s a secondary explosion that has him throwing his arms over his head but doesn’t stop his forward momentum; the only thing that does is the wave of blistering heat where the front door used to be.

“Danny!” he shouts. He tries to push forward, but the flames push him back. He gets close enough to singe the fine hairs off his arms before stumbling far enough away that his skin merely flushes from the heat. “Danny!”

Less than five minutes. Danny was inside less than five minutes, to pick up a six pack of beer to take back to Steve’s place. They’d worked late, finishing up a kidnapping case, and it has become a regular thing to kick back at the house and relax before Danny goes back to his shitty little apartment. Why the hell had Steve insisted on stopping? Why had he bullied Danny into going inside, claiming it was his turn to buy even though it really wasn’t?

“Danny, God dammit!” Steve’s skin feels too tight and it’s hard to catch a breath, as if he has something heavy sitting on his chest. His hands are clenched at his sides, hard and painful knots of flesh and bone. He should call this in. Call 911, call Chin. But all he can do is stare at the fire until his eyes are dry and itchy.

Someone made a call, though, because it isn’t long before the fire department rolls in. He’s pulled out of the way, so that the hoses can get in and clear a space for the men.

“Are you okay, sir?” 

“My partner’s in there,” Steve manages to choke out. “Detective Danny Williams, Five-0.”

He’s given a sympathetic look, but the fireman goes off to relay the information. Someone else comes and tries to get him over to an ambulance for a once-over, but he steadfastly refuses. He can’t take his eyes off the fire, which continues to burn despite the water being sprayed on it.

Steve tries to tell himself that Danny is smart, Danny is resourceful. He’ll find a way to come out of this in one piece. But the evidence against that is right in front of him, the convenience store being reduced to so much rubble and burned cinderblock. Unless his partner found a convenient bomb shelter or lead-lined freezer to hide in, assuming he knew an explosion was imminent…Steve shakes off that line of thought.

Firemen are going into the building now, oxygen tanks strapped to their backs and masks to their faces. Steve just keeps standing there, arms crossed now, doing his best impersonation of a granite sculpture. He can’t make himself look away, or drop his guard, because Danny is in there and Danny will need his help and he needs to be strong for his partner.

It takes a long minute for him to register the sound of his own name over the rush of static in his ears. It’s no surprise to see that Chin and Kono are here; Steve’s pretty sure Chin has some sort of computer set-up that notifies him of anything even remotely involving any of the members of Five-0. Probably picked up the 911 call or some other broadcast, and he’s glad they’re there. More people to keep vigil with him.

“Steve? You okay?” Kono asks in her quiet voice.

“They just went in,” he reports, his voice flat even to his own ears. No emotion. Not the time for it.

“Steve.” Just one word, just his name, but Chin is a master at making the minimum amount of words have the most impact. There is sadness and concern and a desire for Steve to please come away from here, all in just that one word. And he finds himself shaking his head, though his gaze never wavers.

“No. I’ve lost enough, I won’t lose him too.” And then he has to clench his jaw, unable to say more. He has a clear vision in his head of himself having to go to Grace and tell her that her father died and that it was so completely random and pointless. He can’t do it. He _won’t_ do it, because he knows Danny will beat the odds somehow.

The radio chatter has been a low-level hum in his ears; he’s standing close enough to the trucks to hear it. The next transmission that comes through is painfully clear, agonizingly loud.

 _We’ve got bodies_.

Steve’s arms tighten, as if he can hold himself together. He’s dimly aware that he’s trembling, that he’s moving forward again. He has to go in. He has to see for himself.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Steve,” Kono says. She wraps a hand around his arm, pulling him back. Her voice is thick with tears. Chin just looks at him with those sad, hooded eyes, and he’s not strong enough anymore. He feels like a failure when he closes his eyes.

“It’s okay,” Chin says. But it’s not. It won’t ever be okay. Steve just shakes his head and turns away, thinking of nothing but getting back in the car – _Danny’s car, oh God!_ – and driving himself far, far away.

He’s stunned into immobility when he looks up, when he finally opens his eyes. And surely this is some kind of grief-induced hallucination. Because here comes Danny, around one end of a fire truck, looking singed and sooty and bleeding all over his once-white shirt. He’s limping, favoring his bad knee, and dragging along an equally dirty and disheveled kid in his early twenties. The kid is handcuffed, his eyes wide and panicky, but Danny is grinning and lecturing and Steve’s mind has completely blanked out; there’s nothing in his skull right now but white noise.

“I’ve been hanging out with you way too long,” is the first thing Danny says when he gets close enough, giving Steve an exasperated look. “You would _not_ believe the insanely crazy chase this punk led me on, I mean I was jumping over cars and everything. It absolutely terrifies me to think I’ve tapped into my inner McGarrett. I may need an exorcism.”

Not a hallucination. And still all Steve can do is stare. Danny looks like crap, but his free hand is waving around just like always and he sounds so damn normal. Steve can’t think of a single thing to say, and so he says nothing, just walks over to the car and leans against it, forehead on the cool metal of the roof. The shaking is worse now, somehow, and he presses his palms to the driver’s side window in an effort to steady himself.

“What’s with him?” he hears Danny ask.

“There…there are bodies,” Kono tries to explain, sounding just as shell-shocked as Steve feels.

He doesn’t hear a follow-up to this, doesn’t hear anything until Danny smacks his hand on the top of the car, startling Steve into raising his head. His partner is on the opposite side, glaring at him.

“Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t help the people inside. I didn’t even know there was a bomb, okay? I’m sure you’d have been able to sniff it out somehow, and disarm it or whatever with seconds to spare, very heroic, but _I didn’t know_.”

Steve can hear the self-recrimination in Danny’s voice, wants to tell him he’s got it all wrong, but his vocal chords don’t seem to be functioning properly. Not that Danny needs any kind of response once he’s underway.

“All I saw was someone lurking around on the other side of the cooler and really, it shouldn’t have even registered with me but your paranoia has clearly rubbed off. I shouted, he ran, I chased. I know I should’ve called you, I had the phone _in my hands_ when the explosion went off. God knows how many pieces it’s in now. And I didn’t want him getting away, because I _knew_ there were people in there that he’d just killed and I’m sorry I didn’t come and get you first.”

“Danny,” Steve finally manages to say, the name more of a hoarse croak than anything else.

“I mean, who blows up a convenience store? Really? And why does this shit always happen to me? If there’s going to be paperwork, I am _not_ filling it out, I’ll tell you that right now my friend. And…and I need a new phone.”

Danny’s winding down, coming off his own adrenalin rush, and probably vividly feeling every ache and pain he’s earned tonight. Steve’s a little hurt that his partner thinks he’s mad because he didn’t get backup, or help the other people inside the store. Does he really think Steve is that much of an ass?

“I thought you were inside,” he says, and his stomach clenches up at the memory of it. Danny looks confused.

“I _was_ inside. I just told you…”

“I thought you were dead.”

Steve can see when Danny finally understands, and his belligerence morphs instantly into concern and apology.

“Shit, Steve, I’m sorry.”

Steve finds himself unable to look Danny in the eye and rests his head back down on the car. He takes deep breaths, trying to steady himself. His partner is fine. He didn’t die a stupid, needless death. There will be no going to see Grace and telling her bad news.

“Hey. Hey, Steve.” Danny is suddenly beside him, hand warm and solid on his back. “I’m okay.”

Steve turns, looking his partner over critically. He doesn’t look okay – that gash over his eye will probably need stitches – but he’s definitely alive and that’s the important thing. He pulls Danny into a hug, trying not to hurt him. When Danny hugs him back Steve feels all the broken pieces inside himself start to mend and slide back into place. His partner is alive, everything is okay, and he refuses to contemplate how next time that might not be so.

“Come on, Danno. Let’s get you looked at.” He keeps one arm around Danny’s shoulders, leads him to the waiting ambulance. The kid he chased is there already, sitting on the back with a bandage on his arm while he babbles a confession to Kono, who looks singularly unimpressed.

“I didn’t mean to kill anyone,” he says, eyes wide. “I just wanted to scare ‘em, you know? They didn’t have to fire me, not for just that little bit of money I took.”

“You built a _bomb_ ,” Kono points out dryly.

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t know it would be _that_ big. The directions I found online…”

Steve can’t listen anymore. He walks over, clenching his fist before swinging his arm around and catching the kid in the side of the head with his elbow. The kid falls sideways, stunned, and Kono hauls him back up with an eye roll.

“Get him out of here,” Steve says.

“That make you feel better, He-Man?” Danny asks, shaking his head. “I do all the hard work and you just get to clock him? You ever hear of a little thing called police brutality? He’s cuffed, for God’s sake.”

“Yeah, actually, I do feel better.” Steve grins, and the tension that’s been keeping him mostly upright bleeds away and he sags against the side of the ambulance. “Get checked out and let’s get out of here, okay? You can give your statement tomorrow.”

“You’re the boss,” Danny replies, and Steve can hear the threads of exhaustion and pain in his voice. “I shouldn’t even have to say this, but from now on? _You_ buy the beer.”

It’s too soon to joke about that and Steve frowns. “Stay at my place tonight,” he says, not quite asking.

Danny just nods, for which Steve is grateful. Having his partner safe in the guest room is the only way he thinks he can sleep tonight. Close. It had just been too damn close.

“You okay, brah?” Chin asks, clapping a hand to his shoulder.

Steve looks in the ambulance, watches his partner regale the pretty EMT with his tale of heroism, and nods.

“Yeah. I’m okay now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** I was lounging in bed when the image of Steve standing in front of a burning building popped into my head. And of course I had to angst it up. LOL!


	3. Babe, I Hate To Go

Dawn was still an hour off, but Steve was already up and dressed, his duffle waiting by the front door. It was both strange and familiar, donning his fatigues and lacing up the newly-shined black boots. When he’d gone reserve he hadn’t thought he’d be gearing up like this again; he’d gotten comfortable in his civvies. As incredible as it seemed he’d gotten comfortable in his life as well, something he never thought could happen, particularly in those early days of being back home again.

Leaving Five-0, even for a short time, was harder than he’d expected. He had no doubt they’d be fine without him; his team was strong and smart and completely capable. But he’d worry just the same. They’d have to get a temporary replacement for him and he didn’t trust just anyone to have Danny’s back. Chin had already promised to keep an eye on him, and make sure no-one used him for target practice.

They’d had a BBQ yesterday, invited their friends over to wish Steve well and tell him how much he’d be missed. No-one knew where he was going or how long he’d be gone, and that included Steve. He hadn’t planned on being put back on active duty and pressed into service, it wasn’t something he wanted anymore, yet he couldn’t contain a little thrill of excitement at the prospect of getting back into action, of using all of his skills in the way he’d been trained. Danny didn’t have the right mindset to understand that, and so Steve hadn’t ever brought it up, but his partner could still tell that part of him was looking forward to the mission; it made things between them uneasy.

*o*o*o*

_“Wish you could tell us where you’re going,” Kono said, legs draped over the side of her chair. “I need to know where to direct all my good vibes."_

_“Just aim ‘em at me, I’ll get ‘em,” Steve said with a grin._

_“You’ll need them, brah,” Chin put in, then glanced quickly at Danny._

_Steve’s partner sat away from the others, nursing a beer and being unusually silent. He’d done all his ranting and swearing when the Navy had contacted Steve to press him back into service, but there had been no changing the Navy’s mind, and no changing Steve’s either. McGarrett remained rock-solid in his loyalty to his country and if the Navy needed him, he was going._

_“You’ll be able to e-mail, right?” Kono asked. “You won’t just drop off the face of the earth.”_

_“Whenever I get the chance,” Steve promised. He couldn’t give them any more than that. He didn’t know the specifics of his mission or where it would take him. If there was enough downtime, he’d call on a sat phone or send an e-mail, just to let them know he was okay. Chin, Kono and Danny were his family, and leaving them behind was the hardest thing about all this._

_“Half-off shave ice and tofu shrimp for Five-0,” Kamekona offered, his expansive bald head gleaming with sweat. “Just until McGarrett gets back.”_

_“Hey, that’s not fair,” Steve protested. “What about me?”_

_“Hmm. Maybe I’ll name something after you.”_

_“I don’t think you make anything that bitter,” Danny said, the first time he’d opened his mouth in at least an hour._

_Steve sighed. “Danny…”_

_“It’s okay,” Chin said, looking at Danny with his kind eyes. “In his shoes, I’d probably feel the same. It’s not easy being the one left behind.”_

_“Fuck you,” Danny replied angrily. He chugged the rest of his beer and dropped the empty bottle back in the cooler. He got up and walked away, heading down the beach with his hands stuffed in his pockets, cuffs rolled up to keep them from getting wet._

_Steve made to go after him, but Chin stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Give him a little space, Steve. He just needs time.”_

_“Yeah, well, I don’t have a hell of a lot of time.”_

_Kono nodded, looking sympathetic. “Thing to remember is, you know we’ve got his back while you’re gone. But you won’t have any of us with you. He’s…worried.”_

_Steve knew she meant to say scared, and she’d be right. He knew Danny had been doing online searches about SEALs and the kind of missions they got sent on. He’d watched Act of Valor, his whole body tense as a bow string next to Steve on the couch, the viewing of which in hindsight maybe hadn’t been Steve’s best idea. It seemed the more information he had, the more agitated he became. But never once had Danny come out and asked him not to go, or tried to make him choose, which demonstrated to Steve that somewhere in that thick Jersey head of his he understood; he didn’t have to like it, but he understood._

_Everyone left soon after that, giving Steve hugs and handshakes and promises that they’d all still be in one piece when he came home. In all his years of Navy service, he’d never felt such a pang of loss before a deployment. Of course, back then he’d never had anyone keeping the home fires burning for him. It was a strange feeling._

_Ignoring clean-up for the moment, Steve headed down the beach where Danny was standing ankle-deep in the water, looking out at the setting sun. He wanted to freeze that image in his mind, remember it always, even though looking made his chest tight. Danny’s blonde hair lifted a bit in the wind, whatever crazy amount of product he used finally succumbing to the day. He still had his hands in his pockets, but Steve came up behind him and slipped his arms around Danny’s waist, holding him tightly._

_They stood there for a long time, neither one of them speaking as they watched the sun go down. Another beautiful Hawaiian sunset, and Steve committed that to memory too. Wherever he was going, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have much time to appreciate moments like these. Eventually Danny relaxed against him, hands coming out to rest atop Steve’s._

_“I’ll clean up tomorrow,” he said, voice husky with emotion._

_“Okay,” Steve agreed readily. That was the least of his worries._

_“Let’s go in?”_

_Steve hugged him tighter, hating the uncertainty in heard in his partner’s voice. “Yeah.”_

_Danny turned in his arms and kissed him, desperate and fierce, and Steve gathered him close. The rest of the night belonged to the two of them and he didn’t want to waste a second of it._

*o*o*o*

Steve leaned in the doorway of the bedroom, arms crossed, and watched his partner sleep. They’d argued about Danny coming to the airport to see him off, but Steve didn’t want that; his goodbye would be personal and private, and he didn’t want to have to think about Danny standing there on the tarmac watching the plane get smaller and smaller in the sky. In fact, he really didn’t want to wake him at all, but that wouldn’t have been fair and he knew it.

He glanced at his watch, then sat on the edge of the bed. Danny was usually a hard sleeper; once he was racked out, nothing short of an explosion would get him up before he was ready. This morning, though, it took only the pressure of Steve’s hand on his bare back to rouse him.

“It’s about that time,” Steve said apologetically. 

“Just…I need a minute. Okay?” Danny let Steve pull him up off the bed, then shuffled blearily into the bathroom, tugging a bit at his boxer briefs as he went. When he came back he was moderately more awake and smelled of toothpaste.

“You didn’t need to brush your teeth.”

“Oh, really? The memory you want to carry around of me is dragon breath and furry teeth? That’s real nice.” Danny put his hands on either side of Steve’s face and pulled him down for a kiss. Unlike the frantic lovemaking they’d shared last night, this was slow and sweet and Steve melted into it.

Danny pulled back, only far enough to rest his head against Steve’s. “Please. Do not heroically throw yourself on a grenade, or act like a human shield, or any crazy SEAL shit like that, okay? You know I’ll come looking for you if you don’t stay in contact with me, Steven, right? You know this.”

“Just like last time,” Steve murmured.

“That’s right. Just like last time. There’s no place you can go that I won’t come and get you, you remember that.”

“I will.”

Danny kissed him again, then moved around the bed to pull something out of the nightstand. “I know this is corny, romance movie-of-the-week stuff, but I really don’t care. I want…I want you to keep this with you. In one of those stupid pockets on those ridiculous pants.” 

Steve accepted what Danny handed him, grinning when he saw what it was. Inside a business-card sized leather case was a picture of the two of them with Grace, taken at her last birthday party. Steve and Grace were grinning at the camera, but Danny was looking at Steve, affection clearly captured in his eyes.

“This isn’t corny at all.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. But this is, and I don’t want to hear anything from you about it. No princess jokes or shit like that. Because I know it’s goofy, but…”

“Just give it to me, Danny.”

Danny pulled a face, but handed over the other item he’d taken from the drawer. Steve wasn’t sure what it even was, besides a thick circlet of braided fabric. Charcoal gray intertwined with a light blue pinstripe, and while something about the pinstripe fabric seemed familiar he just couldn’t place it.

“What is it?”

Danny ran one finger over the darker pieces. “This is from the tie I wore the day we met.”

Steve stared at the circlet with renewed interest, and suddenly it was hard to swallow. “This…uh…this other one? Our first date?”

“Mmm hmm. That fish place out in Waikiki, remember?”

As if Steve could forget. They’d both gotten more dressed up than they needed to be, laughing at each other about it over seared ahi steaks and bananas foster. Danny had looked ridiculously handsome by candlelight, and once the initial awkwardness was gone he’d been more relaxed than Steve ever remembered seeing him.

*o*o*o*

_“What’s the last date you were on?” Steve asked, poking at the remains of his papaya salsa._

_“Last date? Rachel.”_

_“You don’t get out much, do you?” he teased._

_Danny flipped him off even as his eyes crinkled in amusement. “Not all of us have convenient friends with benefits rolling into port every few months.”_

_“Oh, you know…it’s not…we aren’t…I broke it off,” Steve stammered. Danny just grinned._

_“If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here. So what’s the last date you were on, huh?”_

_“Actual date-date, you mean?”_

_Danny rolled his eyes. “Yes, an actual date. With dinner and dancing and wearing something besides cargo pants and a holster.”_

_Steve suddenly found his fork quite interesting, unable to look his partner in the eye. He’d had a lot of life experiences, no one would question that, but in some areas he knew he was lacking. Which is why he was trying so hard to get it right this time._

_“Oh, ho!” Danny chortled. “Now the truth comes out! You can kill someone ten different ways with a shrimp fork but you’ve never been out on a date? Babe, your social retardation knows no bounds. You really never took a girl out, not even in high school?”_

_Now Steve was blushing. “I was doing other things. You know, football hero, banished by my dad.”_

_“Hey. I’m sorry.” Danny set his wineglass on the table and reached across to put his hand on Steve’s. “I forgot how things were for you. That had to have been really shitty.”_

_And if Steve was already half in love with Danny, the sincere distress in his voice was enough to push him the rest of the way. He turned his hand over so that their fingers tangled together and they were holding hands on the table top._

_“Things have picked up since then,” he grinned._

_“Of course they have,” Danny agreed amiably. “Now that you have me to help orient you to the real world, show you the ropes as it were. You are one lucky guy, I can tell you that. I will be more than happy to give you the benefit of my extensive experience.”_

_Steve just smiled, but inside he couldn’t help but agree. He was a lucky guy._

*o*o*o*

It would’ve been the perfect night if it hadn’t ended up with them stumbling on a botched robbery that had concluded with a high speed car chase down Honoapilani Highway. Then again, maybe for the two of them it still counted.

“Kono did the cutting and braiding for me. I just thought…”

“What?”

“Maybe you’d like to have something you could, you know, touch.” Danny flushed, but he held Steve’s gaze. “I wanted something of me with you.”

“Oh, Danno.” Steve pulled him into a bone-crushing hug. “I love you.”

“I love you too, you big goof,” Danny said.

They both swallowed down their emotions, Steve more easily than Danny because he’d had more practice at it. Moving away took an incredible strength of will, but he did it because he had to. It was time for him to leave and if he didn’t go now he wasn’t sure he’d be able to go at all.

Danny wrapped his arms around himself and nodded. “Just, please come back in one piece, okay? You know what, scratch that. As long as you come back breathing, I don’t care about the rest. We can rebuild you, Chin has the technology. Just come home, cause I’ll be waiting.”

“You better be.” Steve grinned, drinking in the sight of him one last time before he turned and walked away. Danny didn’t follow him and he was glad; he wanted to remember him there in the bedroom they shared, sleep mussed and half-naked.

As he headed out the door, duffle over his shoulder, Steve thought that maybe it was time to get out of the Navy altogether. Time to focus on the life he was building here, with Danny and Five-0. He tapped the contents of his pocket, smiling a little when he thought of Danny sacrificing two of his favorite ties.

“I’ll be home soon,” he whispered. “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** So, the title is from _Leaving On A Jet Plane_ by Peter, Paul and Mary. It popped into my head the other day and immediately made me think of Steve going away on a mission. I’d been holding off writing it, because I have other things in progress, but then hubby and I watched Act of Valor today and I was inspired to get this done. I will not apologize for the amount of gooey sentimentality. ::grins::


	4. Dream About the Days to Come

Steve sat with his back against a humvee tire, trying to make the most out of the little bit of shade offered by the large vehicle. The heat here in the desert was overwhelming, particularly when he was dressed in full tactical gear, and all the visualization in the world couldn’t conjure up a sweet Hawaiian breeze. The wind blew, hot and dry, and he curled his hand around the little leather case that held the picture of his family. 

It had been seven weeks since he’d had to say goodbye to Danny, and he felt each day keenly. They’d never spent so much time apart and Steve found the nights to be especially hard; he was surrounded by the men of Seal Team Three, and they were an excellent team, but he missed the strong arms that normally held him when he slept, missed the puff of Danny’s warm breath on his shoulder. The Navy had recalled Steve to active duty because he had such a strong background in intelligence and the powers that be were very interested in getting some on a new terrorist cell that had been generating disturbing chatter. His team had gathered quite a lot of intel, and he was sure that wouldn’t be the end of it; when analysis was complete, they’d go in and either extract the leader or take the whole cell out; possibly both. Steve couldn’t help wishing they were at that stage already. He wanted to be done, wanted to be on a transport home. Every day it become a little harder to pull out of the focused SEAL mindset, and he was afraid of losing the parts of himself that Danny had softened, the parts that made him less hard-edged military drone and more human.

Steve studied the picture, taking in every beloved detail. Danny, looking at him with such love in his eyes, lips parted in a smile. Grace, beaming at the camera, so excited on her birthday. Steve, holding Grace on his lap and looking happier than he ever remembered being.

*o*o*o*

_“Are girl parties always like this?” Steve asked, feeling a bit overwhelmed. Countless little girls were running around, screaming and laughing, playing something called Princess Tag out on the beach in their swimsuits._

_“You get used to the screaming,” Danny replied, his eyes following Grace. She was wearing a pink and green two-piece, though the top was a tank instead of a bikini; Steve knew all too well what Danny’s policy on bikinis was, having survived a marathon rant on the topic._

_They sat at a picnic table, eating pizza while Rachel tried to wrangle the girls to come and eat as well. They’d already had a sand-castle building contest and some of the girls had gone boogie boarding._

_“I suppose this is better than Chuck-E-Cheese,” Danny said._

_“Better than what?”_

_“You know what, forget it. I have no idea how to even explain that to you. We’re talking cultural differences here, babe, and trust me when I say this is better.”_

_“Oh…okay.” Steve had learned there were some topics not worth pursuing._

_“Danno! Danno!” Grace came running up, sand coating her legs and pigtails flying. Danny scooped her up and set her in his lap._

_“Hey, Monkey. Having a good time?”_

_“Did you see? No-one could catch me at tag.”_

_“You were too fast,” Steve said. “I could barely see you, you were like a blur.”_

_“Really? Cool!” Grace transferred herself to Steve’s lap, one arm slung around his neck. “I’m glad you came to my party.”_

_“I’m glad I came too.” He put his arms around her, feeling as proud and full of love as if she was his own daughter. “There’s gonna be cake later, right?”_

_“Of course there is, silly.” Grace giggled, and pressed a kiss to his cheek._

_“Go get something to eat,” Danny said, nudging her back out with the other girls, who were finally hitting the food table._

_“Okay, Danno. See you later, Daddy Steve.”_

_Steve just stared at her retreating back, unable to form a single thought much less any words. He could feel Danny looking at him, feel his hand on his arm, but he only had eyes for Grace._

_“Steve? Hey, babe, are you freaking out here? Because this looks a whole lot like freaking out. Are you even breathing?” Danny thumped him on the back. “It’s okay, Steve. Steve!”_

_“I’m sorry,” he’d finally choked out. “I’m sorry, Danny, I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”_

_He looked over at his partner, afraid of what he’d see on his face, but was surprised to find that Danny was grinning at him, a big Cheshire Cat grin. “Oh, she meant it. She asked me the other day if it would be okay to call you that.”_

_“And you said yes?”_

_“Of course I said yes. What kind of animal do you take me for? Don’t you think I’m happy that my little girl loves you as much as I do?”_

_“But…” Steve rubbed a hand over his face. “You already have to share her with Step-Stan.”_

_Danny huffed out a laugh and pressed a quick, furtive kiss to his lips. “Don’t be such a goof. My little girl loves you, Steven, and that’s good news. Great news! Because we’re going to be together a good long time, my friend, and that will go a lot easier if Grace is on board.”_

_“She called me Daddy,” Steve said, and he could feel a smile finally stretching across his own face. A bubble of happiness rose up within him. He had a family again. After so many years, he had a family again._

_“You gonna be okay?” Danny asked, understanding and humor in his blue eyes._

_“Yeah.” Steve watched Gracie eat, surrounded by a gaggle of other girls, and thought…that’s **my** girl._

*o*o*o*

Danny sat out on the lanai, watching the moon rise over the water. He tried to take comfort in the fact that somewhere in the world Steve was seeing it too. It made him feel that his partner wasn’t quite so far away. It had been nine weeks, and there had been too few phone calls and e-mails in all that time. The calls were especially hard because they only had a few minutes and it wasn’t long enough, not nearly long enough to lose himself in Steve’s voice. And there was always the fear, whenever the phone rang, that it would be someone other than Steve to tell him how very sorry they were, but Lt. Commander McGarrett wouldn’t be coming home.

He hadn’t heard from Steve for almost two weeks, and he was worried. Wherever in the world Super SEAL was, bad things were undoubtedly happening. Danny could only hope that whatever team he was leading was good enough to have his back. Not as good as Danny, of course, but then who was? He tried really hard not to think about what might be happening, because his imagination was all too ready to supply him with horrible images of Steve killed in any number of ways. He constantly reminded himself of his partner’s ninja skills and super SEAL abilities, trying to go with the whole no-news-is-good-news philosophy.

He’d thought that over time he’d settle into a new routine, that he wouldn’t miss having Steve around all the time. He hadn’t though. Every day, every _damned_ day, missing Steve was like a constant, throbbing ache; always there, always hurting. But life went on anyway. There were cases to solve, criminals to track down. As the interim head of Five-0, he had frequent meetings with the Governor or his aides. Danny still had weekends with Grace – she always sent Steve an e-mail on those days – and cookouts with Kono and Chin. There were trips to Kamekona’s for shave ice, which was half off as promised, and arguments with Rachel. Every day ended the same, with him alone in the bed he normally shared with Steve.

The nights were long. Sometimes he dreamed he was tracking Steve through a jungle, always close but never close enough. Other nights he lay awake for hours, remembering their first meeting at mutual gunpoint, or the way Steve looked when he came out of the ocean after his morning swim. There were a million such moments and memories, and he treasured each one. None more so than the day they finally stopped dancing around each other and admitted their feelings, though of course the two of them couldn’t have done it in any kind of normal way.

*o*o*o*

 _“Jesus, Steven, what’s wrong with you? Do you have a death wish? Because only someone who puts no value on their own life would throw themselves in front of bullets like that.” Danny paced around the hospital room, arms waving, trying not to look at Steve laying there in the bed so pale. “There’s a reason we call backup, babe, and we’re going to have a long and serious discussion about the value of doing so as soon as you’re out of here. Or maybe you’re just trying to kill me. That must be it. Death by heart failure.”_

_And over and over in his mind he saw Steve darting out from cover, twisting through the air to make the impossible shot to take Hendrickson down. In the process he took a bullet to the thigh, nicking the femoral artery. He’d nearly bled out in that field before EMTs arrived, and Danny had washed his hands for almost a half hour afterwards, frantically trying to remove all traces of Steve’s blood. He could still feel it there, though, and rubbed his palms on his pant legs._

_“Danny, stop.”_

_“No. No, you don’t get to talk now.” Danny jabbed a finger in his direction. “I’m tired of you talking. You need to listen, for once in your life, just please listen to me. What you did was stupid and careless. Scum like Hendrickson aren’t worth your life, okay? They’re just not. We would’ve gotten him even without your ridiculous heroics.”_

_“Danny.”_

_“I can’t keep doing this, Steve.” Danny felt his chest tightening and it got harder to breathe. He needed to make his partner understand that this kind of behavior was unacceptable. “You need to find something, okay? I don’t care what it is. But you need to find a reason to stop throwing yourself in harm’s way because there are people here who care what happens to you. I care what happens to you.”_

_“Danno.”_

_This time Danny listened, and bit his lip to keep from talking. He looked at Steve propped up on the bed, his thigh bandaged and elevated on a pillow. He’d come so close to losing him, and the pressure in his chest worsened. Steve held his hand out and Danny reluctantly took it, shuffling over to the side of the bed and sitting in the chair there._

_“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for everything.”_

_“Don’t apologize, Steve, just stop doing it. Please.” Danny hated the way his voice broke; he sounded weak to his own ears. He looked down at his hand, wrapped up in Steve’s, and tried to rein in his wild emotions._

_“I have something. I do. I’m not trying to get myself killed. It’s just, in the heat of the moment…”_

_“I know. Right. SEAL training. I get it.” Danny looked over at him, seeing something in those stormy green eyes that he couldn’t quite put a name to. “What’s your thing? Wait, I bet I know. It’s all the future grenade throwing ahead of you, right? Or the million other ways you have of getting the bad guys to talk besides shark cages.”_

_But Steve didn’t laugh. “It’s you.”_

_For once, Danny had nothing to say. No words on the tip of his tongue, no new rant to slip into. He just looked at his partner, tried to catalogue the emotions he saw on the other man’s face. Apprehension, maybe? Longing? Nerves, definitely._

_“It’s always been you.”_

_He felt something crack inside him then, and flushed with embarrassment as tears started to fall. He’d never felt like more of a girl in his life. But he felt something else, too._

_“Steve, I…” He didn’t know what to say. Words had failed him, possibly for the first time in his life. But like so many Williams’ before him, he knew alternate forms of communication that didn’t rely on words, because it’s always good to have a Plan B in situations like this, and so Danny leaned in and Steve’s eyes widened and then they were kissing._

_Danny thought maybe it was the most disgusting kiss in the history of kisses, what with him blubbering through the whole thing, but when he pulled back there was a shining smile on Steve’s face that he’d never seen before._

_“I can do better.” He used his arm to wipe the tears from his face._

_Steve’s hand tightened around his own. “I think that was pretty good, Danno.”_

_“Maybe…we could try again? When I’m not so salty?”_

_Steve laughed, the smile never leaving his face._

*o*o*o*

Steve breathed in deeply, the scent of salt water and hibiscus filling him with unbelievable contentment. The sun wasn’t up yet and it was still quiet, and he’d never been happier to be home than he was at that moment. He disabled the alarm, thankful Danny hadn’t needed to change the code while he was gone, and crept quietly into the house. He dropped his duffle by the door and made his way up the stairs, careful of the squeaky spot on the fourth step.

The bedroom door was open, the shades pulled, but Steve could see Danny well enough. He sprawled across the bed, half under the blanket and half out, wearing boxers and one of Steve’s Navy shirts. He swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat and just stood there, looking at his partner’s mussed hair and features lax in sleep. Home never looked so good.

Steve stealthily made his way over to the bed and sat on the edge, careful not to jostle Danny. He pressed a feather-light kiss to the other man’s temple, eliciting a soft groan, and so he did it again.

“…’eve…”

He grinned at his name, little more than an exhale on his partner’s lips. He ran one hand lightly over Danny’s side and the response was immediate. Danny rolled off the bed on the opposite side and came up in a crouch, gun in his hand and eyes blinking rapidly. Steve held his hands up, amused, and wondered where the gun had been that Danny could get to it so easily.

“I surrender,” he said.

Danny automatically pointed the gun at the floor, but none of the tension left his body. “Steve?”

“Last time I checked.”

“What the hell are you doing here? Are you insane? I could’ve shot you!” Danny set his gun on the nightstand and ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up more than it already was. “You couldn’t pick up the phone and call me like a normal human being? No, you have to ninja crawl your way in here and scare the crap out of me. Are you AWOL?”

Steve grinned; God, he’d missed this. “No, I’m not AWOL. The mission is over and I came home early. If you’d rather I left…”

“Well, since you’re already here.” Danny launched himself across the bed, tackling Steve and wrapping him up in an impossibly tight bear hug. “You damned stupid SEAL, I missed you.”

Steve hugged him back just as fiercely, breathing in the scent of him, reminding himself that this was all that was important, this man right here. He’d already started the paperwork for a Naval discharge, but there’d be plenty of time to talk to Danny about that later. Plenty of time to settle some plans for their future.

Danny relinquished his hold and sat back up, straddling Steve and eyeing him critically. “Any injuries? Scars? Any brain trauma I should know about?”

Steve settled his hands on Danny’s hips. “Well, I had this really bad splinter. I needed a Band-Aid and everything.”

He held up his finger and Danny kissed it. “All better. Anything else?”

“Yeah. I’m having some trouble breathing. You maybe want to give me mouth to mouth?”

This time Danny didn’t seem worried about morning breath or fuzzy teeth, and Steve couldn’t have cared less; his partner could’ve just eaten a raw onion and some liver and he’d still dive right into that kiss. It was a little frantic, a little desperate, and just what he’d been dreaming of. When it was over they were both sitting up and Danny rested his head on Steve’s shoulder.

“I was worried about you.”

“I know. I was worried about you too.”

“Oh, well, we have this great guy on loan from HPD. Frank Wu. He follows police procedure to the letter, it’s been very relaxing having him around.” Danny wrapped his arms around Steve’s waist and curled up in his lap.

“New guy, huh? Sounds boring. I bet you’ve been missing explosions and car chases.”

“Nope. Not even a little.” Danny kissed his neck. “He’s a great guy, really nice. But…he’s not you. I’m so glad you’re back, babe, you have no idea.”

“I think I have _some_ vague notion.”

“You must be tired. Why don’t you get in the shower and then come to bed. I believe I’m calling in sick today.” Danny sat back, coughing dramatically. 

“Sounds good to me.” Steve wasn’t kidding about that; he was exhausted. Danny dragged him up off the bed, helped him out of his fatigues and boots, and then stopped, one hand touching the circlet that was wrapped twice around Steve’s wrist. The gift he’d been given was definitely looking worse for wear, sweat-stained, sun baked and peppered with desert sand, but he’d never taken it off.

“It helped,” Steve said. “It helped a lot.”

Danny just nodded and pulled him into another hug. Steve anticipated a lot of that now that he was back and in one piece. He knew he’d never get tired of it.

“Go get in the shower, you goof. You want something to drink or eat or anything?”

“Just some water, thanks.” Steve turned towards the bathroom, but Danny stopped him with a hand on his wrist, covering the braided ties. 

“I love you.”

“Danno. I love you too.”

Another kiss and then Danny was shooing him off, his eyes suspiciously bright, and Steve headed into the bathroom. He was good with his decision to leave the Navy. He was ready to put that life behind him and start a new one, here with Danny and Grace.

It was so damned good to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** There were several requests for a follow up to the previous chapter, the one where Steve goes away on his mission. You asked, and I listened. ::gives big politician smile:: I hope you like the wrap-up. As in the previous chapter, the title for this one is also from _Leaving on a Jet Plane_ by Peter, Paul and Mary. Writing this was way more interesting than cleaning my house. LOL!


	5. The Moustache Debate

It was a slow day for the Five-0 task force; after all, you couldn’t always count on fiery explosions and acts of mayhem to shake things up. Danny grumbled through a stack of paperwork, though he was honestly glad to have the time to get caught up with it. When things got crazy, as they often did, the reports were the first things to fall by the wayside. Chin was performing software upgrades, and Kono was out picking up lunch.

Steve, who had limited patience at the best of times, was prowling around HQ like an agitated tiger, waiting for something to happen. He’d go into his office for all of ten or fifteen minutes, only to pop out again and wander around. Danny pointedly shut his door, doing his best to ignore him, and Chin just sighed whenever Steve came to look over his shoulder.

Kono returning with take-out received a much more enthusiastic welcome than necessary, and it was a sad kind of day when lunch was the most exciting thing about it. Chin covered the computer table and they ranged around it, pulling items from the take-out bags.

“Hula Dogs? Seriously?” Danny asked. 

“And lemonade,” Kono pointed out.

“Whatsamatter, Danno?” Steve opened up a little tub of mango relish. “Don’t you eat hot dogs in Jersey?”

“Yes, Steven, people in Jersey eat hot dogs. I would like to point out that these are not in fact _hot dogs_ at all. This is some kind of sausage with diced fruit on it. A real hot dog is a Nathan’s, all beef.”

“What? One of those skinny things? You’d have to eat a whole package of them to feel full.”

Danny snorted. “A Nathan’s is a real hot dog, accept no substitute. What’s that sauce?”

“Hot garlic lemon,” Chin said, sticking his finger in it.

“Don’t worry, I got you plain yellow mustard.” Kono handed the small container to Danny. “Unless you want to try the guava mustard.”

“You should have some of the pineapple relish,” Steve said. “It’s really good.”

“Is there anything you people _don’t_ put pineapple on?” Danny griped, slathering mustard on his hot dog. “I realize it’s your number one industry around here, but it’s fruit. Fruit does not belong on meat. I’m pretty sure everyone but Hawaiians knows this rule.”

“It’s good,” Kono insisted. “Spicy and sweet, just like me!”

Danny rolled his eyes, settling down with his pseudo-dog and a tall cup of lemonade. There was a moment or two of silence while everyone started eating, but it only lasted long enough for him to notice the amount of relish Steve had piled on his own hot dog.

“Can you even fit that in your mouth, Captain Caveman? What the hell do you have on there?”

Steve chewed noisily. “It’s fruit relish, Danny. It’s healthy.”

“It’s four different kinds of relish, and that disgusting spicy sauce. How do you know it’s not combustible?”

“I got him the veggie dog,” Kono pointed out. “And a whole wheat bun.”

“Yeah, mom. It’s healthier than what you’ve got, trust me.”

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot. Guess what I heard while I was out?” Kono deftly changed the conversation and Chin sent her a knowing smirk. “There’s going to be a remake of Magnum, PI and they’re going to film it right here in Oahu.”

Danny choked on his lunch. “ _What?_ A remake? They can’t remake that show! That’s a _classic_ show!”

“That’s the one with the guy with the moustache, right? Eighties?” Kono asked.

“Your lack of pop culture knowledge saddens me.”

“Brought in a lot of tourist dollars back in the day,” Chin said. “It’ll probably be good for the local economy.”

“Like we don’t have a hard enough time doing our jobs, now we’ll have to dodge camera crews and actors?” Steve griped. “I don’t like it. Like traffic isn’t bad enough.”

“They cannot remake Magnum, PI,” Danny insisted. “Magnum is an iconic character and only Tom Selleck can play him.”

“Is it a remake or a reboot?” Chin asked. “That makes a difference, you know.”

“Dunno,” Kono replied. “All Lily Cho knows is that they’re making a new version of the show.”

“Bound to be an improvement over the original.” Finished with his hot dog, Steve started eating the banana relish right out of the container. 

“I cannot believe you said that.” Danny glared at him. “How can you say that? There’s no way to improve on perfection. Well, maybe if they set it in Jersey, where real life happens.” 

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I never thought there was a really good feel for the Islands in the original. If you look at it in terms of cinematography alone…”

“Cinematography? Really? That’s where you’re going with this? Look, there was plenty of real Hawaii in the show. My point is that they can’t get just anyone to play Magnum. Who can pull off a moustache like that these days?”

“I don’t think those are in anymore,” Kono observed. “Scruffy facial hair in general, but not the ‘stache.”

“Selleck’s moustache was one of a kind,” Danny said. “It was practically its own character. Whoever they get to play that role now is going to have a cheesy porn ‘stache like Ron Jeremy or something, you mark my words.”

“I don’t think facial hair is key to the show, brah.” Chin tidied up his end of the table, passing more relish down to Steve. “If they do a reboot, it would probably be with a bunch of younger actors anyway. Different demographics these days.”

Steve finished off the banana relish and moved on to the coconut. “I can’t believe you even like that show. It was completely implausible.”

Danny gaped at him. “Since when does anything on TV need to be plausible? Every week he got to tool around in a Ferrari and pick up hot babes, and occasionally he got to shoot at bad guys or punch them in the face. Who wouldn’t want that?”

“Oh, come on Danny! He lived on that big fancy estate, supposedly as what – security? People were always sneaking onto the grounds. Magnum got to live there rent free for no good reason, and how many of his so-called clients ever paid him? He was always broke.”

“He was a PI in _Hawaii_ , Steven. It was expected that he’d be all laid back. He wore those ugly shirts and shoes with no socks, proof that he was living the Hawaiian dream.”

“He sure never wore a tie,” Steve muttered. Chin and Kono exchanged an amused glance across the table; when the entertainment came free it made sense to sit back and enjoy it.

“Excuse me?” Danny wadded up the paper wrapping from his hot dog and tossed it at Steve’s head. Predictably, the ninja caught it and threw it in the general direction of a garbage can. “Of course he didn’t wear a tie. He was a _private investigator_. As a licensed officer of the law, I have higher standards to maintain when I am out in public, doing my very public job. You probably only watched it for the action sequences and Vietnam flashbacks anyway.”

Steve snorted. “Oh, please. TV Navy doesn’t have much to do with actual, real life Navy. I have to admit he wore the uniform well, though.”

“He _wore the uniform well_? What does that even mean?” Danny threw his arms wide and almost knocked over his lemonade, but Chin was quick and grabbed it in time. “Magnum hardly wore that shiny white monstrosity. More like   
cut-offs and tiny little bathing suits.”

Kono laughed. “What is this, Project Runway? Why do you care what he was wearing?”

“They probably each had a Tom Selleck poster in their bedrooms,” Chin added with a hint of a smile.

“Jeez, you don’t need to make us sound so gay.” Danny slumped in his seat, arms crossed.

“Nothing gay about liking Tom Selleck,” Steve disagreed. “He was a man’s man, still is. Magnum could swim, surf, paddle board, run on the beach, and still have time to take down criminals and get the girl.”

“So you like him because he’s just like you.” Kono grinned, and Steve flushed.

“I always liked the interior monologues,” Danny admitted. 

“You have those too, Danny,” Steve said. “They’re just not internal.”

“Asshole,” Danny muttered.

Chin shook his head. “If they use any locals in filming, I bet Kono gets on the show. An episode about surfers, maybe.”

“You’re definitely the most camera-ready of the four of us,” Danny agreed. “If they want to blow a lot of stuff up, they can always hire Super SEAL over there as a technical consultant. I swear in a previous life you had to have been a stunt man or something.”

“I’ll be sure to tell them all the cops have to wear ties.”

“Please allow me to remind you that people outside of Hawaii will be watching this program, and so it must appeal to a wider audience. In the contiguous United States detectives wear ties. That’s just how it’s done.”

Steve frowned. “Contiguous? Really? You need to stop thinking like a haole, Danny. The show is set in Hawaii, and so it should accurately reflect what life here is like.”

“Look, the whole thing is a moot point anyway. Without the moustache they have no show.”

“Enough with the moustache already!”

Danny narrowed his eyes. “Will you stop being prejudiced against the ‘stache? You know no-one else can pull it off. I give it five episodes before it folds.”

Kono shrugged. “Johnny Depp looks good in a moustache.”

“There’s no way Johnny Depp can play Thomas Magnum.”

“Why not?” Chin asked. “As an actor, the man’s a chameleon.”

Danny shook his head. “He’s just not Magnum material. That’s what I’m trying to tell you here. _No-one_ is. They’re going to ruin it and all these kids are going to grow up with a false idea of what that show should be.”

“Even Grace?” Kono asked.

“No. Grace has seen the original and we have discussed it at length. Luckily I’m here to guide her along the proper path in these matters.”

“Steve could be Magnum,” Chin said. “He has the athleticism.”

“Athleticism,” Steve agreed with a grin.

“Not to mention a penchant for getting hit in the head,” Danny said dryly. “I think it’s best not to unleash McGarrett on an unsuspecting world. Bad enough he runs around here blowing shit up.”

“If I was on TV you’d be my faithful sidekick.” Steve smirked maliciously. “Barney Fife to my Andy Taylor.”

“You did not. You did _not_ just compare me to Barney Fife.”

“Who’s Barney Fife?” Kono asked. Chin just shrugged.

“If anyone is the bumbling sidekick around here, pal, it’s you. Charging in without backup, shooting the people we need to interrogate…yeah, that’s all _you_.” Danny jabbed a finger in Steve’s direction. “I’m the one with the cool head and adherence to police procedure and basic civil rights.”

“Oh, okay. So that wasn’t you that strapped Bastille to the car and drove around with him like a screaming hood ornament?”

“After all the shit you put me through on a daily basis, I earned that one. And Bastille deserved it, that guy was a tool. I will not let you sully my memory of it.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Oh, no. Let’s not _sully_ it.”

“Maybe we should…” Chin started to say, but he was interrupted by the ringing of Steve’s cell phone.

“McGarrett,” he snapped in his usual greeting. “Yeah, we’ll be right there.”

“What’s up, boss?” Kono asked. “We got a case?”

“Yeah. Two banks were just hit out in Diamond Head, simultaneously.”

“That’s different,” Chin said.

Everyone pitched in to clean up lunch, and then they were on their way out the door, Danny and Steve to one crime scene and Chin and Kono to the other.

“Keys,” Steve said. Danny tossed them to him without comment. “You know, maybe you should think about upgrading the Camaro to a Ferrari.”

“A Ferrari is not the kind of vehicle a father drives his little girl around in, Steven.”

“Think about it, Danno. A sexy red Ferrari. All you’d need to do is grow the moustache.”

“Very funny. Could you just please drive and stop making asinine comments?” Danny slid into the passenger seat, Steve got behind the wheel, and they were still arguing about facial hair as they drove away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** So, during a brief period of downtime at work, this idea popped into my head. As far as I know, no-one is actually planning a remake or reboot of Magnum, PI. Though how much would I love to see Tom Selleck guest star on H50? That would be awesome! LOL!
> 
> All things Hula Dog came right off their online menu, I’m not making any of that up. Stuff like that is too good to make up. ::grins::
> 
> Special thanks to hubby for giving me some good talking points in all this dialogue.


	6. Saving Grace

Grace Williams stepped out of Honolulu International Airport, lei around her neck, and breathed deeply. Hawaii smelled exactly as she remembered and she felt a thrill buzz across her skin to be back home again. _Home_. She’d lived a lot of places in the intervening eight years – Las Vegas, Aspen, Dallas, Atlanta – but to her this would always be home. Salty ocean air, palm trees, surf boards strapped to cars; the flood of memories was powerful.

Getting a grip on herself, she hailed a taxi and tossed her carry-on and her suitcase in the back seat. “UH Manoa,” she directed the driver.

It was only a twenty minute drive and Grace spent it practically hanging out of the window as they cruised along H1. Some landmarks she recognized, some she didn’t. She grinned with the knowledge that she’d have at least four years to familiarize herself with all of it again. Longer, if she stayed for graduate school and that was definitely part of her plan.

“Your first time on the Islands?” the driver asked.

“No. I lived here for a couple years when I was a kid. Been a long time since I’ve been back.”

“Welcome home,” the driver said pleasantly.

“Mahalo.”

The buzz came back when they turned into the Manoa campus and Grace got an eyeful of green lawns, white buildings with pillars, and other students carrying bags and boxes to their dorms.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Hale Aloha. Lehua Tower.”

“Gotcha.”

The four round towers that comprised the Hale Aloha dormitory were easy to find, connected to each other by enclosed corridors and the central building that housed the cafeteria. Most freshmen lived here and there were countless students milling around, unloading cars and or saying goodbye to family members. Grace paid the cabbie when he pulled into the parking lot, tipping generously with the money Step-Stan had given her before she left.

“Good luck!” he called out as he pulled away.

Grace made her way in and up; her room was on the fourth floor. She used the key they’d sent her in the mail to access what would be her home for the coming year. There was no sign of her roommate yet, so she dumped her carry-on bag and her lei on a random bed and took a look around. The far wall was dominated by a wide window that showed a view of the athletic fields. Beneath the window were two desks side by side. One bed on each side of the room, a double shelf hung on each wall, and a small closet on either side of the door. The walls were bare, painted a light tan, and she couldn’t wait to dress the space up with some color. First things first though.

Pulling out her cell phone, Grace sat on her bed and pressed speed dial. She mentally counted ahead to figure out the time in Atlanta; almost seven in the evening there.

“Hey, monkey!”

“I made it. I’m sitting here in my dorm room, and no I didn’t have any trouble navigating the airport.” Not that she would have, given the amount of traveling she’d done the last eight years.

“Never doubted you for a minute. How’s the weather?”

“It’s Hawaii. Warm and sunny, but it’ll probably rain any minute.”

They both laughed and Grace had a little pang of homesickness. With all the moves, new schools and new friends, her father had been her constant. He followed her from state to state, taking whatever law enforcement job he could just to be close to her. The older she’d gotten, the more she’d appreciated the sacrifices he’d made. And there had been some big ones.

“Let me know when you get a mailbox, and I’ll send you a care package.”

“You don’t have to do that, Dad.”

“Yeah, well, college freshmen need more than just money. Besides, I figure if I keep you hooked up with sweets you might overnight me some malasadas.”

“You send me some Jelly Bellies and I might even hook you up with coco puffs from Liliha’s.” Grace laughed at her father’s moan on the other end of the phone. There’d been a lot of stuff he hated about Hawaii when they lived there but pastries were not one of them.

“I’m going to expect regular e-mails from you, Miss Grace,” Danny said in his serious voice. “Remember, I know how dangerous it can be in Honolulu.”

“And I know how to be careful, Danno.” Grace rolled her eyes. “I’m not exactly helpless.”

“I know that. You’re smart and strong and amazing. Just don’t go looking for trouble, okay? Be aware of your surroundings, stay in groups. And stop rolling your eyes at me.”

Grace giggled. She looked up as her door opened and her presumed roommate came in dragging a trunk.

“I have to go. My roommate just got here.”

“Don’t forget to call your mother.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“Danno loves you.”

“I love you too, Danno.”

Grace hung up and tossed her phone on the bed. She hurried to help her roommate carry her trunk in the rest of the way. The girl flashed her a grateful grin, and then collapsed on top of it once it was next to the other bed.

“A trunk seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said regretfully. “Are you Grace? I’m Lili.”

“Nice to finally meet you.” When Grace had received her housing packet, there was contact information for her roommate. They’d exchanged several e-mails and pictures prior to Grace flying out for the start of classes. She envied Lili’s statuesque physique and delicate Asian features; she herself was as height challenged as her father and while she thought she was pretty, she knew she’d never be beautiful.

“Lili, you packed too much.” A burly man wearing an Aloha shirt and khaki shorts came through the door lugging two big suitcases and a laptop case.

“Stop complaining, _Appa_. I’m the one who had to carry the trunk.”

The man dropped the bags on Lili’s bed and wiped an arm across his forehead. “You must be Grace. I’m Lili’s father.”

Grace shook his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Shimono.”

“Likewise. If my Lili doesn’t drive you crazy, her mother and I would love to have you to the house for dinner some weekend.”

“ _Appa_ ,” Lili whined. “Don’t you have somewhere other to be?”

“Don’t sass me,” Mr. Shimono said with an indulgent grin. “Call your mother tonight when she gets off work.”

“I will.” Lili and her father hugged and then he was out the door. “Parents are so embarrassing.” 

“I know what you mean,” Grace agreed. “My dad wanted to outfit me with mace and a stun gun.”

Lili looked at her bags with a frown. “Unpacking doesn’t sound like much fun. You want to go exploring instead?” 

Grace grabbed her cell phone and shoved it in her pocket. “You bet!”

*o*o*o*

Both girls retired early that night, but even though she was suffering some pretty impressive jetlag Grace found it hard to fall asleep. She still couldn’t believe she was back in Hawaii. Her mother had tried to talk her into going somewhere closer, like Wesleyan or Georgia State. Her father had understood, though, and encouraged her application to UH.

She thought back to a conversation she’d had with Danno shortly before leaving for school. Something had been preying on her mind for a long time but she’d always been afraid to bring it up because it made him so sad. Still, now that she was back living in Hawaii, she couldn’t not go and see him.

_“Can I talk to you, Danno?” Grace asked after they’d finished cleaning up from dinner._

_“Uh oh. Sounds serious.” Danny finished wiping his hands and tossed the dishtowel on the counter. “You want to sit outside?”_

_“No, in here is fine.”_

_They moved from the small kitchen to the small living room; Danny never seemed to be able to afford a bigger place. He always made sure there were two bedrooms, though, so Grace could have a space of her own._

_“So what’s up, daughter of mine?” He asked, sitting on the couch and propping his feet on the coffee table. Grace sat cross-legged on the floor._

_“When I go back to Hawaii, I want…would it be okay…”_

_“You want to see Uncle Steve?” Danny asked softly._

_“Yeah.” Grace felt relieved that he’d said it first. She felt guilty for bringing it up, but there were things she needed to know. Things she hadn’t noticed as a kid but looking back just seemed so incredibly obvious._

_“You’re eighteen, Gracie, and your own woman. If you want to see him go ahead. You don’t need my permission.”_

_“I know.” She bit her lip, trying to think about how to ask the next question. “You stopped talking to each other.”_

_Danny nodded, that same sad look on his face that he always got when he thought about Steve. “It was just hard. Me moving around so much, and of course he was busy with Five-0 and the Navy.”_

_“But you miss him.”_

_“I do,” he acknowledged with a shrug. “Steve was the first real friend I’d had in a long time. But you know how friends come and go in your life. Some just aren’t meant to be forever.”_

_This was a familiar line; every time they’d moved and Grace had cried about losing friends, that’s what her father always told her. Of course, she was younger then, and now she had the benefit of age and experience. Not to mention some things she’d “accidentally” overheard her mom talking about one night when she’d had too much to drink._

_“I know. I can’t help but wonder…I mean, I know this is a personal question…”_

_“Just spit it out,” Danny sighed._

_“It’s just, I wondered if you and Uncle Steve were more than friends. You know. Like…special friends?”_

_“Special friends? Really? All the money Step-Stan pays for your education and that’s the best you can do?” No-one did mock outrage like Danny Williams. “You want to know if we were partners in every sense of the word? No, we were not.”_

_“Oh.” Grace deflated a bit at that, but then she rallied. She was certain she wasn’t wrong. “Did you love him, though?”_

_Danny got a faraway look in his eyes, and Grace felt a little pain in her chest at the wistful expression on his face. “Yeah. I did. If we’d stayed, who knows. Maybe something would’ve come of it. You don’t seem especially troubled by any of this.”_

_“I always kind of knew that you felt that way for Uncle Steve,” Grace admitted. “I was so mad when we moved to Las Vegas. I missed him too, but even back then I could see how much harder it was for you.”_

_Danny reached for her hand and pulled her up next to him on the couch, cuddling her close like he used to when she was much younger. “I never regretted moving to be with you, Gracie. If I had to do it all over again, I’d make the same choice.”_

_“I just wish you didn’t have to choose,” she whispered into his shoulder. “It’s not fair.”_

_“Well, that’s life kiddo. You can’t always get what you want.”_

_“But you really won’t mind if I go see him?”_

_“No. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you. He loved you too, you know.”_

Grace knew. She used to regale her Las Vegas classmates with tales of the Super SEAL, remembering daring rescues and lazy weekends spent on his private beach. Uncle Steve had always made time for her, and more importantly he’d always made Danno smile. It didn’t escape her notice that while her father dated occasionally, he’d had yet to get serious with anyone. And it was juvenile of her to think so, but maybe Uncle Steve was still single and lonely too. She’d never been able to get her parents back together, but if she could reunite Danno and Uncle Steve, that would be just as good.

There were three days until classes started, plenty of time for her to head into Honolulu and see if she could fix what Step-Stan and her mother broke so many years ago. With that determination in mind, Grace was finally able to fall asleep.

*o*o*o*

Steve McGarrett hated slow days. Not that he wished crime sprees on his city, but there was only so much paperwork he could do before his eyes started to cross. Okay, so maybe he would’ve appreciated a drug smuggling ring or something, but just to break up the monotony.

“I’m going out for lunch, you want anything?” Kimball asked, popping his head in Steve’s door.

“No, I’m good. Take your time, there’s nothing happening here anyway.”

“Will do.”

Warren Kimball had been with the Task Force for four years, the longest any of Danny’s replacements had lasted. Steve wondered if that was because they’d finally found someone who was a good fit, or because he’d just mellowed out enough to let someone else in without giving them a hard time.

Steve pushed the stack of papers away from him and sighed. Maybe he’d see if Kono wanted to do some sparring or something; he had way too much pent-up energy. He went out into the main room of HQ, where Chin was installing some upgrades to his software.

“Kono went to lunch with Kimball,” he said before Steve could even open his mouth. “And no, I’m not sparring with you.”

Steve scowled. “You don’t know that’s what I was gonna say.”

Chin just looked at him, one eyebrow raised, which pretty much ended that conversation. Then he looked over Steve’s shoulder.

“Wow,” said an awestruck voice. “Just like I remember.”

Steve turned to see a young woman standing in the doorway, looking around with wide eyes. She was clearly a college student, dressed in shorts and a UH Manoa t-shirt. There was something familiar about her that he couldn’t place, at least not until she smiled widely, her brown eyes shining.

“Uncle Steve!” She ran across the room and threw herself at him, hugging him tightly. He just stood there stupidly for a minute, his brain trying to make sense of what was happening, and then he hugged her back.

“ _Gracie_? Is that you?”

“You’ve gone and grown up on us,” Chin said with a smile. “Just look at you!”

“Uncle Chin!” Grace detached herself from Steve and gave him a hug. “I’m so glad you guys are still here. I was worried that maybe you didn’t work for Five-0 anymore.”

“Gracie, what are you doing here?” Steve asked. _Has something happened to Danny?_

She gave him the patented Williams eye roll and pointed to her shirt. “I just got in yesterday, and I wanted to come see you before classes started.”

“E komo mai,” Chin said. “Welcome back.”

“It’s good to be back,” Grace said, rocking back and forth on her heels. “I mean, the flight was horrible. Way too long. But I’m so happy to be here. I always considered Hawaii my home, you know? Is Auntie Kono around?”

“She’s out at lunch, but she’ll be back in a little while.” Steve couldn’t stop staring at her. She’d changed a lot in the last eight years – gotten a little taller, developed a woman’s curvy body. But she still had Danny’s smile, and the way she was waving her hands around was certainly familiar too. He wanted to ask about her dad, but felt awkward bringing it up. What if he’d gotten remarried? What if something had happened to him, without Steve around to make sure he stayed out of trouble?

“Lunch sounds great. You guys want to get something to eat? My treat. Step-Stan gave me lots of spending money.”

Chin and Steve exchanged a look, and then Chin shook his head. “I have to finish up here. But you two go ahead and get caught up. By the time you get back Kono should be here and I know she’d love to see you.”

“Can we bring you something back?” Grace asked.

“I’m good. You two have fun.”

“Any place in particular you want to go?” Steve asked, walking out with her. He still couldn’t believe she was here. Grace Williams, after all this time.

“Does Kamekona still have his shrimp truck?”

“He’s got a full-fledged restaurant now,” he replied with a grin. “And I’m pretty sure for you he’ll have a table free.”

They headed out into the warm sunshine, and how strange it was to be walking around Honolulu with Danny’s grown-up daughter. “So what’re you studying at UH?” It was one of a thousand questions he had but most of the rest were about Danny and he wasn’t ready to ask those yet.

“Marine Biology,” Grace replied with a grin. “Best case scenario – I do undergrad and grad here and then get a permanent job on the Islands.”

“You really love it here, don’t you?”

“Always did.”

Steve slung an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “That’s my girl!”

Kamekona’s restaurant was an open pavilion with shutters all around to seal it up when it was closed. The big man himself still did all of the cooking, though now he also employed a young waitress; she wore short-shorts and a tight blue shirt with Kamekona’s face emblazoned on it.

“Howzit, Commander?”

“Hey, Kellie. What’s good today?”

“Special today is Shrimp Mexicali. But I’m betting you want the usual.”

“You know me so well.” Steve grinned. “You want to see the menu, Gracie?”

She shook her head. “You still have the spicy shrimp?”

“Sure do. You want a plate?”

“Yes, please.”

“And two waters,” Steve added. Kellie bounced off to put their order in while he snagged a table. “So…uh…how’s your mom?”

Grace shrugged. “You know Mom. Charlie keeps her pretty busy. He gets into everything. Stan says it’s a boy thing.”

“He’s probably right. I used to raise hell at his age too.” Steve fiddled with the napkin holder. “How do you like Atlanta?”

Grace gave him a funny look. “It’s okay. They do everything real slow there. Not laid back like here, just…slow. Savannah is prettier and we go there for weekends sometimes.”

Steve tried to imagine his former partner living a slow, sedate life but he couldn’t do it. Even Danny had gotten antsy with too much down time. He’d never have admitted it but Steve suspected that Danny looked forward to the insanity of some of their cases almost as much as he did.

“Little Jersey! Howzit?” Kamekona lumbered out from the kitchen holding their lunch plates in his hand.

“Howzit!” Grace jumped out of her chair and threw her arms as far around the big Hawaiian as she could. “I missed you.”

Steve took the plates, warmed by Grace’s enthusiasm. She’d always been a bit reserved as a child but now she fairly radiated Danny’s natural exuberance. 

“You goin’ to UH?”

“I sure am. Marine Biology.”

Kamekona nodded solemnly. “You’re a smart one, like your pops. How’s the haole doin’?”

Grace slid her eyes to Steve and he hastily busied himself with his shrimp. “Dad’s doing okay. Thinking about retiring. I don’t think he enjoys the work anymore.”

Steve could hardly fathom it. Danny not being a cop? He wondered what had happened to make the best detective he knew want to pack it in.

“He gonna come see you?” Kamekona asked. “He does, bring him by.”

“You bet I will.” Grace resumed her seat, closing her eyes as she bent over her spicy shrimp and took a deep breath.

“Mahalo,” Steve said when his big friend handed him the bottles of water before heading back to the kitchen.

“This tastes even better than I remember,” Grace groaned. “I’m almost afraid to get the coco puffs. I might spontaneously combust.”

“Whatsamatter, don’t they have any good food down South?”

“Grits, Uncle Steve. With every meal.” She pulled a face that reminded Steve so much of Danny that he lost his breath for a minute. Grace went back to her shrimp, devouring it in a less-than-ladylike fashion that probably would’ve earned her a lecture from Rachel. But while she ate she studied him with an intensity that seemed to be a Williams family trait.

“I got something on my face?” he joked.

“Are you still with that Navy lady?” Grace asked, her tone dead serious.

Steve frowned. “What? Navy…oh. You mean Catherine? No. She finally settled down but not with me. Still e-mails me from time to time, though. She has a couple kids.”

“Oh. So, are you seeing anyone?”

“Why the sudden interest in my love life?” he asked suspiciously. God, he hoped this wasn’t some kind of teenage crush; Danny would kill him.

“Just catching up,” Grace replied nonchalantly. She was the very picture of innocence and he didn’t buy it for a minute.

“How about you? Any boyfriends?”

“A couple. The ones Danno didn’t scare off with cop interrogations.” She sipped at her water. “Nobody right now. Long distance relationships are impossible, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know. Cath and I did okay.” But he wasn’t thinking about her, he was thinking about Danny. They certainly hadn’t been able to keep in touch, though not for lack of trying on his part. After awhile he just figured his partner wanted to put Hawaii and everyone in it right out of his mind.

“Well, I’m not looking for anyone right now. School has to come first. But I like to keep my options open.”

“It’s good to have options,” Steve agreed. He still wasn’t sure where she was going with all this, but he’d be on his guard.

“Are you finished?” Grace dabbed daintily at her mouth with a napkin. “I wanna see if Auntie Kono is back. I feel like some girl gossip is in order.”

“Okay. You can meet the new guy too.”

“Yeah? Is he any good?”

 _Not as good as your father_. “Yeah. He’s good.”

*o*o*o*

Grace spent the evening decorating her half of the room, and thinking. Uncle Steve hadn’t been very forthcoming with information, but Auntie Kono had whisked her away for some shopping and told her all she needed to know. Like her dad, Uncle Steve was single and only dated occasionally. He’d gone through countless replacements for Danno, though Kimball seemed to be sticking for now. Grace had met him and he seemed nice enough, but he wasn’t the right partner for the Commander; only one man was. Kono had agreed, and mentioned how lonely her boss seemed to be.

Now the only question was how to get Danno and Uncle Steve back together. It’s not like her dad could follow her back to Hawaii, just because she was going to school there. It was one thing to do it when she was a little girl, but following your college student around was kind of weird. She wasn’t sure she could get him here for a visit, either, even if she coerced Step-Stan into buying him a ticket; she thought maybe he was afraid to see Uncle Steve again, because it had been so long and Danno was the one who had stopped calling.

As if on cue, her cell phone rang. “Hey, Dad. Why are you up so late?”

“Just missing my girl. Checking to see if they’ve made you Pineapple Princess yet.”

“Ha, ha. Hey, guess where I ate lunch today? Kamekona’s!”

“No kidding? He still peddling shrimp?” There was honest amusement in his voice, which made Grace smile. As much as he’d complained about Hawaii when he’d lived there, her dad seemed to really miss it sometimes.

“He has a whole restaurant now. Still makes the good spicy shrimp.”

“Nice to know some things don’t change. How’s your Uncle Steve?” Grace had known he’d ask, just like she’d known that Uncle Steve wouldn’t. She’d spent a big part of the day with him and he never brought up his former partner at all.

“He’s doing okay. His hair has gone really gray.” There was a long pause while she waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. “Dad? Danno, are you okay?”

“Yeah, no, I’m fine. Sorry. Mind was just wandering. So did you see the others? Is Kono still kicking ass?”

Grace laughed. “She said she’s going to kick yours for not staying in touch. You better watch your back, she knows where you live.”

And really, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Of course Uncle Steve would track her dad from state to state, would follow whatever news about him that came over the wire. She knew for a fact that her father did the same thing; he had a little scrapbook of articles about the Five-0 Task Force and every picture of Uncle Steve that had been published online or in the paper. She personally thought they were both idiots, but then she had the advantage of a fresh perspective.

“Uncle Chin has kids, did you know? Three, a boy and two girls. One of the girls is Danielle, after you. He said she never shuts up.” She wanted Danno to know that he wasn’t forgotten, that he still had friends here. And maybe he was on the wrong side of forty to still be a cop, but she thought he wouldn’t mind doing the work if it was with the right people.

“I’m glad for him,” he said. His voice sounded a little off, like maybe he had to talk around a lump in his throat. Grace knew her dad could get emotional sometimes, though he always tried to hide it from her; like she’d think less of him for being a normal person with normal feelings.

“You should come out for a visit, Danno. Everyone’d like to see you.”

And here came the same tired argument he’d been giving her since before she left. “You know I’d like to, Gracie, but I can’t take the time from work right now, not to mention it’s going to be a while before I can save the money for the flight. Plus, you’ve lived it; who wants to make that trip from Atlanta? It’s too damn long to be stuck in an airplane seat subsisting only on peanuts.”

“Dad…”

“Don’t _dad_ me. You know I’d come if I could, monkey. But you’ll send me pictures, right?”

“Of course I will. In fact, I’ll send some as soon as I get off the phone.” All part of the plan. She’s snapped plenty of pictures of Uncle Steve today, including one with the big smile that made him look so young and happy.

“I’ll check them out tomorrow. Right now your old man needs to get some sleep.”

“Be careful at work.”

“Always am. Goodnight, Gracie.”

“’Night, Danno. Love you.”

“Danno loves you too.”

Grace ended the call but kept her phone in her hand, studying it. She was getting an idea, but she needed help pulling it off. When Lili came back from dinner, she accosted her at the door.

“Hey, do you know how to forward calls?”

*o*o*o*

Danny locked up his gun, tossed his badge on the kitchen table, and sank down onto his couch with a sigh. He loved air conditioning. He couldn’t appreciate it enough. It was humid here in Atlanta. He’d experienced his share of dry heat – Dallas and Vegas had been almost intolerable at times. Triple digit temperatures should never be the norm. But he’d take Dallas heat over this ridiculous muggy, clinging heat any day.

It had been a long, pointless week. His department was investigating a string of home invasions in the Old Fourth Ward and they didn’t have much to go on. He’d mostly sat around, re-checking and triple-checking what they already had. It was tedious.

Danny had worked in a variety of law enforcement capacities since he first became a cop in Jersey. Not all of them had been satisfying. In fact, only one really stood out in his mind and that was his time on the Five-0 Task Force. He’d done important work there, made a difference every day. He’d been…happy. Happier than he could have imagined that first six months of being so far from home. Leaving Hawaii to follow Grace to Las Vegas had been the second most difficult parting of his life.

He looked at the clock, then picked up his phone. If Grace was in class, he’d leave her a voicemail. Danny was trying not to call so often, but he wasn’t used to his little girl being so far away. He worried. He figured if he could get to once a week it would be good enough. The phone rang three times before it was answered, and his greeting died on his lips.

“McGarrett.”

Danny was sure his heart stopped, just for a moment. It had been six and a half years since he’d heard that voice, aside from the occasional interview he’d caught online. He didn’t know how his call to Grace ended up on Steve’s phone, and didn’t know what to do now that he had him.

“Who is this?”

He could picture Steve’s face in his mind, knew that constipated look very well. And he panicked, hitting the button with his thumb and cutting off the call. He looked at the phone in his hand like it was a snake that was going to bite him. Danny relaxed his fingers, letting the phone drop to his lap before he had the chance to hit redial. There was no point in renewing contact with Steve, not after all this time. What would he say? The situation hadn’t changed, not really.

He’d forgotten all about Chin, and Steve’s natural tendency towards paranoia. When his phone rang he automatically picked it up without thinking.

“Hello?”

“You called.”

Crap. Of course Steve tracked him down. And quickly, because he’d used his land line instead of his cell phone. He didn’t even know why he still _had_ a land line. Now he had to make conversation, so he didn’t come off as a complete idiot.

“I thought I was calling Grace. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“Danny…” Steve’s voice softened. “How are you?”

“Good. I’m good. Busy. You know.” Well, so much for not sounding like an idiot. He didn’t know what to say. He should probably apologize, but he didn’t think he could get the words out.

“Yeah. Me too.”

There was a long pause, and then sounds of a scuffle; Danny pressed the phone harder against his ear, suddenly concerned that something bad was going down at HQ. 

“Steve?”

“…stupid males, I swear to God.”

“Kono?”

“Danny! Aloha!”

Danny felt a smile spread across his face. Cutting off contact with Steve had meant cutting contact with all of them, and that had hurt just as much.

“How you doin’, rookie?”

“Not the rookie anymore, Danny. How’s Atlanta treating you?”

“It’s hotter than hell here. As soon as I go outside, I sweat. You would not believe how much laundry I have to do, it’s ridiculous.” He pictured Kono in his mind as he remembered her, a slip of a thing who always had sand in her hair and was a force to be reckoned with.

“Nothing beats the Islands, brah. We saw Grace. I can’t believe how big she is.”

“You’re telling me? I’m so proud of her. She knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. She’s gonna do great things, you mark my words. She’ll be the next Jacques Cousteau.”

“Smart like her father. No, Steve, you were one step away from grunting.”

There was more scuffling, a muffled yelp from Steve, and then Kono was back on the line. “Sorry about that. The boss still hasn’t mastered basic phone etiquette.”

Danny laughed. “Still a lunkhead, huh?”

“Well, you know how…hey! Steve!”

There were clear sounds of pursuit, and he could only surmise that ninja SEAL had finally managed to snatch his phone back and was now on the run. A feeling of longing rose up in Danny, so powerful it hurt; he remembered being part of antics like that, goofing around like kids until a case came in and they all immediately became the professionals they were. It wasn’t that he didn’t have camaraderie in his current job, but it wasn’t the same. It was harder for him to let himself go, to truly become part of a team again. Nothing would ever match what he’d had with Five-0. It was especially difficult here, where the soft-spoken Southerners didn’t always know how to take his blunt, straightforward approach to things. And some of them actually seemed a bit afraid of him when he started on a rant.

“I think I lost her,” Steve said, and Danny could hear the grin in his voice.

“Where are you?”

“I went up through one of the air ducts. I’m up on the roof.”

“Of course you are. You couldn’t just take the stairs like a normal person?”

Steve snorted. “She would’ve caught me. This buys me a few more minutes.”

“You know she’s gonna kick your ass, right? Maybe the roof isn’t the best place for you to be right now.” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll stay away from the edge.”

Danny chuckled. It was almost like old times. He could just picture Steve huddling behind an air vent, hiding from a girl. Silence grew between them, and he wasn’t sure how to fill it. 

“Why’d you stop calling?” Steve finally asked.

Danny sighed. “What was the point of it, Steve? You were in Hawaii, and Stan was dragging me across the damn country. It wasn’t…”

“I thought we were friends, Danny.” There was no mistaking the hurt in his voice. “Friends don’t have to lose touch just because of distance, that’s a load of crap and you know it.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Steve,” Danny said honestly. 

“An apology would be nice. Some indication that maybe our friendship actually meant something to you.”

“Steve…”

“No, you know what? You can’t just call me…”

“You called _me_.”

“…and pretend like nothing ever happened. Okay? You were the one person I thought I could count on. I guess I was wrong.”

“Steve,” Danny said, but the call had been cut off. He threw the phone across the room with a bitter curse.

*o*o*o*

“Grace Williams, open this door!”

“Holy Jesus, is it the cops?” Lili practically fell out of bed, eyes wide. Grace just sighed.

“No. It’s Uncle Steve.” She took her time getting to the door, slipping yoga pants on under her nightshirt. When she opened the door her uncle’s furious face got right into hers.

“What the hell did you think you were doing, young lady? Who asked you to meddle in other people’s business?”

Doors started opening all down the floor, heads popping out to see what all the ruckus was about. Grace tugged Steve’s arm and pulled him into the room, slamming the door behind him. Lili moved back towards the window, clearly wary.

“This is your Uncle Steve? Steve _McGarrett_ , for chrissakes?” She crossed herself. “He’s crazy, Grace, I’ve heard the stories.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“Uncle Steve, this is Lili, my roommate.”

“Nice to meet you, Lili. Is there someplace else you can be?”

“Hey!” Grace protested. “This is her room too!”

“No, that’s good. That’s fine.” Lili wore shorts to sleep in, but she grabbed her bra and slithered past Steve on her way out the door. “I’ll be back in ten. Um…maybe fifteen.”

As soon as her roommate was gone Grace turned on Steve, poking him in the chest with one slim finger. “You can’t just come banging around here first thing in the morning, Uncle Steve! And chasing my roommate out of her own room. That’s just so _rude_!”

“Why did you forward your number to my phone?” Steve asked, arms crossed over his chest. Grace had never seen him this angry, but she’d known him too long to be intimidated by his Commander glare.

“Was it really that bad? Talking to him?”

“Gracie, you just can’t go messing around in other people’s lives. You’re making choices for Danny instead of letting him make his own.” 

“Well, he’s making all the wrong ones,” Grace huffed. She sat on her bed, legs crossed, and ran a hand through her hair.

All the fight seemed to go out of Steve and he lowered himself down to Lili’s bed, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “They’re still his to make. And I don’t appreciate you dragging me into the middle of it.”

“You don’t know how unhappy he’s been, Uncle Steve.” Grace sighed and pulled her pillow around to hug to her chest. “He hasn’t been the same since we left Hawaii. And I can’t help feeling a little guilty about that, because I’m the only reason he left.”

“He’s your dad, you know he needed to be with you. We all understood that.” Steve looked down at his hands. “He had to do what he thought was right.”

Grace debated with herself about how much she wanted to reveal. She knew how Danno felt about Steve, but she didn’t want to be the one to say it. Particularly when she wasn’t sure how Steve felt about things.

“He’s alone now,” she said finally. “With me gone, he doesn’t have anyone.”

“Danny needs to make the first move here, Grace. I can’t force him to call me, can’t force him to reach out to his friends.”

“I know. And I’m sorry, Uncle Steve. I’m just trying to help.”

“I know you are, kid. Leave this to the professionals from now on, though, okay? And I’ll make sure your Auntie Kono knows that too.”

Grace just laughed. She should’ve known better than to put anything over on Steve McGarrett. They both stood and he gave her a big hug.

“Since I’m here, how about I treat you and Lili to some breakfast? Provided you can find her.”

“Best offer I’ve had all day,” Grace grinned. While she got ready she made a mental note to send her dad more pictures, and Uncle Steve’s phone number. Maybe if she gave him all the right pieces he could finally put them all together and stop wasting time.

*o*o*o*

It was another week before Danny buckled under the pressure. Grace flooded his inbox with pictures of Steve, Chin, and Kono. Pictures of a BBQ at Steve’s house with Kamekona manning the grill and Grace having a water gun fight with Kono. There were countless pictures of the UH campus, many of them with Grace pulling silly poses. She’d also sent him an apology for “accidentally” forwarding her phone to Steve’s, and sent his cell number “in case of emergency.”

Working up the courage to call took some time. Actually getting to talk to Steve took even longer. The first time Danny tried, Steve was in the middle of a case. And by middle, he meant that people were shooting at him and he promised to call Danny back; when he did Danny was interrogating a possible suspect in a bank robbery and had his phone turned off. He almost threw in the towel when he called again and Kono answered because Steve was busy rappelling down the side of a building, for reasons Danny was pretty sure he didn’t need to know.

Finally, he had a couple days off and decided to stay up especially late so he could catch Steve after work. Assuming he wasn’t pulling an all-nighter or running a stake-out. Luck was finally with him this time, and Steve picked up on the first ring. 

“McGarrett.”

“Do you have to answer like that? You know it’s me. A simple _hello_ would have sufficed.”

“You calling just to harass my phone etiquette, Danny?”

“No.” He lay on his bed, head propped up on two pillows, and watched his ceiling fan turning lazily overhead. “No, that’s not why I called. You’re right, I should’ve stayed in touch. It was just…”

“Just what?” Steve prompted.

“Being away from all of you…it hurt. Your life was still going forward without me and mine seemed like it was on hold. After a while, it just felt like there was too much…I don’t know…distance I guess. Between the life I had and the life that was being forced on me.” He knew he had to get it all it out, no matter how stupid it was. “I was jealous.”

“It wasn’t any easier for me, Danny.” Steve didn’t sound angry anymore, just sad. “I got used to you having my back. It wasn’t the same when you were gone. You have no idea how much I looked forward to your calls, and your stupid texts, and then you just cut me off. That hurt.”

Danny ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I was hurting too much myself. I know that doesn’t make much sense.”

“I understand. I do,” Steve said, and Danny didn’t doubt for a minute that he did. He knew that what he’d done had been unforgiveable. Steve had a lot of abandonment issues, and he also needed a keeper, someone to keep him from making grand and dangerous gestures in the name of justice. Danny used to be that person, the calm head that pulled suspects back from the edge of the roof and insisted on protocol as a way to keep his hot-headed partner from getting himself killed. They’d developed a deep level of trust early on in their partnership and Danny had betrayed that.

“I missed you, you crazy SEAL bastard,” Danny said around a lump in his throat. “I was an idiot.”

“Whoa, wait. Back that up so I can record it.”

“Very funny.”

“No, look, Danny. I shouldn’t have let you walk away like that. I wasn’t a very good friend to let you do that.”

Danny laughed, though it was just a bit watery. “So we were both idiots. I can work with that. Just…let’s not do that again, okay? Because I could really use a friend. One that doesn’t take a year to get out one sentence. You would not believe how slow people talk here, it’s ridiculous. I do these interrogations and I practically have to pull every word out of their mouths. Takes ten times as long.”

“South not agreeing with you so much?”

“No. I’ve been thinking about retiring, actually. The work hasn’t been…satisfying.”

Steve made a little noise of agreement. “You ever think about going back home?”

“All the time,” Danny answered truthfully. “Now that Grace is there, I’d have a reason. But I worry that would be a creepy, stalker dad thing to do. I don’t want to be that guy, I really don’t.”

“I meant home to Jersey,” Steve murmured. 

“Oh.” And Danny thought that said a lot about the current state of his life that Hawaii had been his first thought when home was mentioned.

“But that’s great! I mean, if you wanted to come back…we all miss you. I know we’re not blood family, but we’re still ohana.”

“I’ll have to give it some thought. I don’t…I just need to be sure.” Oh, but he wanted that. Wanted it so much, and not just for Grace. Maybe it was finally his chance to have something for himself.

“There’s always a place for you here, Danno,” Steve said softly. 

“You have no idea what that means to me, honestly. Steve…I appreciate you understanding. And I’m sorry. Really.”

“That’s what friends are for.”

*o*o*o*

Steve checked the monitor for the tenth time in as many minutes. He couldn’t recall ever being this nervous about picking up someone from the airport, not even Mary and she gave him plenty of reason. He had Danny’s itinerary memorized, knew how long both his layovers were, and kept hoping there wouldn’t be any delays.

“Uncle Steve, you need to chill out. He’ll get here on time.”

Five-0 was taking up a corner of Baggage Claim, Kono and Chin ready with the _Welcome Home Danno_ banner. His triumphant return was supposed to be a secret but Steve had been able to pry it out of Grace without much effort. Chin had been worried about overwhelming him right off the bat, but Steve insisted that the show of support was important.

They’d had several more phone calls in the intervening time, sharing stories about notable cases they’d worked on and the people they worked with. Each subsequent conversation had gotten easier until it felt like Danny had hardly been gone. More than that, those phone calls had helped Steve realize that it might finally be time to talk to Danny about the feelings he had that weren’t precisely the kind you had for your best friend. That, though, would be a private face-to-face conversation that would have to wait until Danny got settled.

“Plane’s here,” Chin said, nodding at the monitor. Sure enough, the flight from Bellingham was listed as arrived, so now they just needed to wait for Danny to deplane and make his way to baggage claim. Steve kept his eyes on the escalator, waiting to catch that first glimpse of his friend; Grace beat him to the punch.

“Danno!” She ran part way up the escalator and threw her arms around her father. Danny hugged her back fiercely and whispered something in her ear. Grace just grinned and pointed down to where the rest of them were standing. Chin and Kono held the banner up high, cat-calling until he got off the escalator. He was already looking a little moist around the eyes, and then he was hugging Kono and slapping Chin on the back and making fun of their banner.

Steve took the opportunity to look his friend over, noting the changes. Danny was wearing his hair a bit shorter these days, and he’d lost a little weight. But his blue eyes were dancing and crinkling in the corners, and he literally beamed.

“Grace, you are grounded. One secret. I asked you to keep one secret, and instead you brought half of Oahu here.”

“I caved under Uncle Steve’s superior interrogation techniques,” Grace said flippantly. “Honestly, Danno, the man’s a menace.”

Finally Danny turned to look at Steve, his smile faltering just a bit. Steve held his arms open. “Come on. Bring it in.”

That got his friend laughing. They hugged and it felt wonderful. _Amazing_! Danny was back and Steve was never taking that for granted again. It should have been a short, manly kind of hug, except that neither of them seemed to want to let go. If anything, Danny seemed to hold on tighter, his head pressing into Steve’s shoulder. 

“We’ll…uh…go wait for your bags,” Grace said, looking worried. Steve just nodded at her, and she moved towards the baggage carousel with Chin and Kono. 

“You okay, Danny?” Steve murmured.

“I missed you,” Danny mumbled into his shirt. “You big ape.”

They laughed, and finally moved apart. Danny’s eyes were red with unshed tears, and Steve imagined he didn’t look much better.

“You look good.”

“You look gray,” Danny shot back. 

“It’s distinguished.”

“No it isn’t. You know they make hair dye for that.”

“I’m not dying my hair.”

Steve and Danny grinned at each other, and then the others rejoined them with Danny’s two suitcases.

“You must be really jetlagged,” Grace said, linking her arm through her father’s. “So here’s the plan. We go back to Uncle Steve’s and you can just crash. Tomorrow, I’ll give you a tour of UH and then we’re having a BBQ.”

“Sounds great. I could sleep for a week. Remind me again why I willingly chose to spend eighteen hours traveling here, most of that squished into a tiny airplane seat?”

“Because where Grace goes, there goest Danno,” Grace replied with a grin.

“I’ll remind you of that when you’re married and I’m living over your garage.”

“Now, see, _that’s_ creepy,” Steve said, throwing an arm over his friend’s shoulders. “Come on, Danny. Let’s go home.”

*o*o*o*

Danny sat out on the beach, in one of the two Adirondack chairs. The BBQ was long over, Grace was sleeping in Mary’s room, and Steve was coming his way with a beer. He was still feeling out of sorts from the long trip, but not as bad as he’d been the day before. The stars were out overhead, reflecting on the water the rolled relentlessly to shore. He dug his toes deeper into the sand as if anchoring himself.

“Danny.” Steve held out a Longboard and Danny happily took it. His friend dropped into the other chair and they clinked their bottles together. This was so familiar it might’ve been just yesterday since they’d been here, instead of eight years. It had been a long time since he’d felt this relaxed.

“Guess I’m back to apartment hunting tomorrow.” He took a long swallow of his beer. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate that. Seems like that’s all I’ve done. I had one place in Dallas that they had to shut down, the bed bugs were so bad. That was disgusting.”

“No,” Steve said decisively. “No apartment hunting. I want you to stay here, Danny. I’ve got plenty of room.”

Danny tried to get a bead on his expression but it was too dark to make it out. “I didn’t come back here to freeload off you.”

“Who said anything about freeloading? You’d have to pay half of all the utilities and groceries. And help patch any bullet holes.”

“Steve, I…”

“There are too many ghosts in this house,” Steve said quietly. “You’ve been one of them for the last eight years. Don’t make me beg.”

Danny set his beer bottle on the sand and reached out. Steve met him halfway, their hands clasping. Something tight loosened in Danny’s chest and he squeezed his friend’s hand.

“Okay. But just for the record? Still hating the pineapple.”

“Noted. And thanks.”

Nothing else needed to be said, not then. There would be plenty of time to talk things out while Danny got reacclimated to Island life and took back his position as Steve’s partner in Five-0. Right now, it was enough. Right now, it was pretty much perfect.

*o*o*o*

Danny took Grace back to UH the following morning in Steve’s truck. She kept up a running commentary on college life, the friends she was making, and gave him a thorough critique of the Marine Biology department. Danny just listened and watched her out of the corner of his eye, amused at how much she was using her hands as she talked. Like father, like daughter.

“Turn right here,” Grace directed. She pointed out which of the towers was hers and then dragged him up to show him her room. In the two months she’d lived there she’d certainly made it home. Her shelves were full of school books, pictures and the big stuffed dolphin Steve had gotten for her when she was nine. Her roommate had gone more minimalist with her decorating, sticking to just a few graphic art posters and family photos.

“Seems nice and cozy,” Danny commented. “You don’t bring boys in here, do you? No, you know what? I don’t want to know. I’d probably have an aneurysm if I knew.”

“Give me a break, Dad.”

“Just remember how much this place is costing, okay? School work first, partying a distant, distant second.”

Grace shook her head. “You know I’m not a big party girl. Give me some credit.”

“I do. You know I do.” Danny felt instantly contrite. His daughter had never given him reason to worry. She’d never been brought home by cops, never let her grades slide, never turned into one of those snotty, obnoxious teenagers. Always and forever, she was his sweet Grace.

“So…are you going to be staying at Uncle Steve’s? ‘Cause you know he has the room. And the beach. And if you go back to work you can carpool.”

“Grace Williams, were you eavesdropping?”

“No! Well, maybe a little. But not on purpose, I swear!” She looked so endearing that Danny couldn’t even pretend to be mad at her.

“Yeah, I’ll be staying at Steve’s. In the guest room.”

“Hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?” Grace grinned and Danny pulled her close and place a big, wet kiss on her cheek.

“What’s that for?”

“That’s for being my saving Grace.”

“I owed you,” Grace replied with a shrug. “And you know, you get to have a life too, Dad. It’s okay to be happy.”

“Thanks, Gracie.”

“Dad, you’re back in Hawaii. It’s _mahalo_." 

“Don’t go trying to turn me into a native,” Danny warned. “Next thing you’ll have me eating pineapple pizza and wearing board shorts.”

Grace giggled. “You’d blow Uncle Steve’s mind. Come on, I’ll show you around campus.”

Danny let himself be pulled away, following his daughter wherever she wanted to take him. He’d always be grateful to her for leading him back home, and back to Steve. This time, he’d do it right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** No idea where this fic came from. Just popped in my head one day, Grace going back to Hawaii for college. Couldn’t just leave it be, though, I had to throw in some angst. But, as someone who shall not be named so nicely pointed out, my middle name is fluff. It was fun writing Grace older, and so like her dad. LOL! Hope you enjoy!


	7. Dark Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Episode tag for season one episode nine, Po’ipu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Standard Disclaimer:** For this and all future songs that find their way into this series, I don’t own any rights. Just borrowing them to help tell a story!

**Dark Side, by Kelly Clarkson**

_There's a place that I know_  
 _It's not pretty there and few have ever gone_  
 _If I show it to you now_  
 _Will it make you run away?/_

_Or will you stay_  
 _Even if it hurts?_  
 _Even if I try to push you out_  
 _Will you return?_  
 _And remind me who I really am_  
 _Please remind me who I really am_

_Everybody's got a dark side_  
 _Do you love me?_  
 _Can you love mine?_  
 _Nobody's a picture perfect_  
 _But we're worth it_  
 _You know that we're worth it_

_Will you love me?_  
 _Even with my dark side?_

_Don't run away_  
 _Don't run away_  
 _Don't run away_  
 _Promise me you'll stay_

Though he would hate the analogy, Danny is a lot like the ocean. Sometimes his words, his feelings, beat against Steve like particularly choppy waves. In the first days of their acquaintance it was like wiping out on his board and being caught in the surf – he didn’t know which way was up and it was hard regaining his footing. Now that they’ve been working together for a while Danny is more like the gentle swells further out from the beach; Steve finds his ranting and hand waving soothing. The detective has become the background noise of his life, and he finds comfort in that.

In the span of one day everything has changed, and once more Steve is struggling to keep his head above water. For six years the one thing he knew he could count on was that his SEAL team would have his six. There was no-one he trusted more. Having a fellow teammate turn on him isn’t something he can actively process; it was never part of his world view before now. More than that, Danny has gotten a glimpse into the darkness that lives inside Steve; watched Steve kill someone who only hours before he’d embraced as a friend.

“You okay?” Danny asks, coming to the back of the ambulance. 

Steve just nods, not making eye contact. The slice on his arm stings like fury, but he refuses to go to the hospital; the EMTs are in the process of wrapping it in gauze.

“I know you’re gonna bitch, but I made you a reservation at the Hilton for tonight.” Danny holds up his hand to forestall his partner’s argument. “This is not up for debate, Steven. Your house is a crime scene. You are _not_ staying here tonight.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. _You’re_ not fine. As soon as you’re finished up here I’m driving you over. No arguments.” Danny glares at him before walking away to confer with Chin.

Steve knows it’s a losing battle. They’ve given their statements to HPD and the Governor. His father’s house is crawling with crime scene techs and cops. There’s no more reason to stand around, to linger, to look at the place where Nick Taylor’s body had fallen. He hates being turned out of his place, hates that Danny has been a part of all this.

“I don’t have to stay at the Hilton,” he says as soon as he’s all wrapped up and Danny has materialized back at the ambulance. “You can’t afford that.”

“That’s why I used your card,” Danny counters with an unrepentant grin.

Steve isn’t up to the banter, not tonight. He’s exhausted – physically, emotionally – and would be more than happy to drive himself to the Hilton since Danny’s going to make him go anyway. 

“I’ll take my truck. You go on home.”

Danny rolls his eyes. “Yeah. No. I got a double room, ‘cause you? Can’t be trusted by yourself. You’ll uncover some kind of nefarious plot on your way through the lobby and tomorrow morning I’ll be hearing how the Hilton blew up. Grab a bag and let’s go.”

Again Steve doesn’t rise to the bait and he can feel the concerned look that’s being aimed at him. Instead, he does as he’s told and goes to pack a bag. He doesn’t even register the amount of damage that’s been done to his home as he carefully picks his way through the crime scene, careful not to trod on any evidence.

The ride to the Hilton seems way too long, and he spends it slumped against the passenger door, half asleep. Danny doesn’t try to fill the silence, but Steve can feel the weight of his gaze just about every thirty seconds; he wonders how his partner can even stand to be around him right now. He remembers how he stabbed one of Taylor’s men in the back, a killing blow that instantly dropped the man. He didn’t even know what the other guy looked like, much less his name.

Danny gets them checked in quickly, despite the late hour, flashing his badge in a flagrant abuse of power. Any other time Steve would enjoy himself at his partner’s expense for that, but he just doesn’t have the energy. Everything has changed and he’s still floundering, still getting sucked under by the force of the waves. 

“You don’t have to stay,” Steve says as soon as they’re through the door and into the room. “We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

“It already is tomorrow, and no we don’t. We’ve done everything but the paperwork, and that will keep for one more day.” Danny pushes Steve in the direction of the bathroom. “You need to get washed up. I think you scared the desk clerk.”

When Steve shuffles into the bathroom he has to admit that Danny may be right. Between the gash over his eyebrow and the slice on his arm, he’s got more than his share of dried blood flaking on his skin. Throw in bloodied knuckles and he looks like he’s been through the wars. He dry swallows two Tylenol and wets a washcloth, scrubbing off the worst of the mess. He could really use a shower, but he’s just too tired. He quickly changes into cotton sleep pants and balls up his dirty clothes, shoving them back in the bag.

“How’s the arm?” Danny asks when Steve comes back out.

“Fine.” He braces himself against the wall. “Go home. You don’t have to stay.”

“You can say that as often as you want, I’m not going anywhere.” Danny pushes himself off the nearest bed and grabs his bag, the one he keeps in the trunk of the Camaro for emergencies. “I’m going to wash up. When I come back I want you at least sitting down, if not completely horizontal.”

Steve scowls at him, but there’s no real heat behind it. He can see how tired Danny is too; it’s been a long day for all of them. He doesn’t remember ever having an op go so completely wrong, though he knows it’s a credit to his team that they were outnumbered and outgunned and still came out on top. It doesn’t change the fact that his inability to see that Taylor had gone rogue put all their lives in danger.

With a sigh, Steve slides into the far bed, his back against the headboard and his legs partially covered by the thin blanket. He doesn’t like just sitting here when there are so many people putting in extra hours because of him but his adrenalin rush has passed and he knows he’d be useless in the field right now.

Danny comes out of the bathroom wearing gray cut-off sweatpants and a blue t-shirt, both rumpled beyond all hope. He sits on the other bed, his good leg tucked beneath him while the other leg hangs over the side. Steve looks away, looks down at his hands as he bunches up the blanket and then smoothes it out; he repeats the motion over and over.

“I should’ve known,” he says.

“How could you? Nobody knew.”

“You did.” It comes out sounding more like an accusation than a plain statement of facts, and maybe he’s just a bit resentful that his partner seemed to have made Taylor right from the first moment.

“All I knew was that I didn’t like the guy. I didn’t know him. You had no reason to doubt he was anything but what he seemed.” Danny paused. “You and Nick had a history together, I get that. Covert ops and all that crap. You trusted him because he never gave you a reason _not_ to.”

“He offered me a piece of the action. Back at the house.” The blanket bunches, then smoothes. “All I had to do was kill Pak.”

“Look at me, Steven.”

It takes a long moment or two, but he can’t resist the summons. He has a hard time resisting anything when it comes to Danny. Surely that’s a character flaw of some kind, because he’s supposed to be the boss.

“What happened with Taylor will never happen to you, do you understand me? Regardless of what I think about the General, and for the record I still think he’s getting off way too easy, it’s not our place to make that kind of judgment call. We did the job, we kept people alive. Taylor was in it for the money. You’re not wired that way.”

“I killed his team without knowing anything about them, or even giving them a chance to surrender,” Steve protests. “And I keep thinking about what that woman said. ‘How can a man do that and still call himself a man?’”

“Self defense, Steve. You think they would’ve left any of us alive?”

But Steve can’t answer right away, because he sees himself grappling with Nick, fighting for control of the knife. And Bullfrog had obviously been neglecting his training or he would’ve disarmed Steve right off, taken the gun away from him.

“It’s like I go to this dark place in my head,” he finds himself saying, his voice bleak. “And the training takes over. You don’t know the things I’ve done, the things that Nick had to do.”

Danny is getting angry now, Steve can practically feel it radiating off him from one bed away. “Fuck you and your secret SEAL crap, okay? You think I don’t have some clue what you had to do?” 

“You don’t…”

“I _do_!” Danny yells, and gets to his feet to pace. “You think you’re all darkside, but there’s more to you than that. I’ve _seen_ it. You throw yourself in front of speeding bullets and out of planes to protect people you don’t even _know_. Hell, you practically leap tall buildings in a single bound! You listen to me when I’m going through shit with Rachel. You worry about Kono when she’s undercover, or how things are going with Chin and Sid. Because you _care_ about people, Steven”

He hears the sincerity in Danny’s voice but refuses to let himself be warmed by it. He has to make his partner understand what happened. He has to warn him.

“I care about _you_ ,” he replies, anger in his own voice now. “And it’s wrong, Danny, because I just killed someone I used to trust with my life. How do you know that won’t be me a year or two from now, looking for shortcuts that don’t need to be taken. Betraying you.”

It’s a real fear of his, always has been. He’s let so many people down, people who mattered to him, and doing that to Danny would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. If Nick could do something that unforgiveable, what’s to say Steve wouldn’t follow his lead when things get really hard.

Danny stops by the end of Steve’s bed, his expression thunderous. “You won’t. Because I won’t let you. Because I care about you, too. I’ve only got two things keeping me on this stupid rock – you and Grace. And I’m not about to let anything happen to either one of you.”

“But that darkness…I can feel it in me,” Steve whispers. He can’t look away from his partner’s expressive face, blue eyes flashing. Danny’s next words are softly spoken, though he still looks pretty fierce.

“It always will be. But you know it’s there and so you can keep it locked away. With a great big padlock. God knows you’ll still need to draw on it from time to time, given the kind of trouble you get yourself into. And that’s _okay_. But you have to see the rest of you that’s good too.”

Steve wants to believe it. Days like this are so hard, especially in their line of work. It doesn’t take much to have you doubting your motives, doubting your faith in yourself or those around you. But Danny is becoming like the swells again, soothing and steady. Inexplicably, he’s still here despite everything that happened.

“I won’t let you get lost in the dark,” he murmurs. Steve shakes his head.

“How can you want that? You’re so much _better_ than that. You deserve so much _more_.”

“Yeah, I’m a damn saint.” Danny sighs and sits next to Steve on the bed, bumping him with his hip to get him to move over. They sit side by side in silence for several minutes, long enough that Steve’s eyelids are starting to droop. He remembers making fun of his partner, who had so instantly disliked Nick

“Were you really jealous?” he asks finally.

“Will you freak out if I say yes?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

Despite himself, Steve feels a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. There’s something incredibly sweet about that, but he doesn’t want to bring undo attention and have the mood shift again.

“Will you freak out if I tell you I kind of liked you being jealous?”

“No.”

“Cause I did.”

“You’re such a goof,” Danny says affectionately. He pulls Steve into a hug, arms gripping him tightly until some of the tension finally drains away. Steve clutches him back just as hard, trembling a little from physical and emotional overload. He knows they’ll probably have to talk about their feelings tomorrow, like a couple of girls, but it can wait.

“So listen,” Danny says into the side of Steve’s neck. “I’m clinging to consciousness by my fingernails here, so I’m declaring us done. We both need some sleep.”

“Will you…” Steve starts to ask but Danny cuts him off.

“Shut up, McGarrett, I’m talking right now. We’re going to sleep, and I’m not inclined at this moment to move to the other bed so I hope you don’t mind sharing. This is not a come-on or some kind of cheesy move, though you’ll probably get both when the time is right. Sleep is all that will be happening here tonight, capiche?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be a hardship for just one night,” Steve says, feeling immensely relieved. Danny comforts best in close proximity and he’s not ashamed to need that tonight.

“Your sacrifice is noted and appreciated. Move over.”

Steve moves as far as he can until he’s practically clinging to the edge of the bed. He doesn’t want to assume anything, doesn’t want to do anything that will chase Danny away. His partner just sighs, and for all of five minutes there’s a large gap between them. Steve wants more, is afraid to ask for it.

“Fuck this,” Danny grumbles finally, and tugs Steve across the bed. He goes willingly enough, glad to give up control to someone else, just for a little while.

“You remind me who I want to be,” he murmurs, tucking himself up against Danny and reveling in his heat. “Don’t let me forget.”

“I’ve got you, babe. Get some sleep.”

Steve slides an arm over Danny’s waist, holding on like his life depends on it. And maybe it does. He has confidence that his partner will do what he said he will, that he has his six. Danny will stick with him, pestering and nagging and making sure he stays grounded. He’d been right earlier; choosing this man to be his friend is the best decision he’s ever made.

“Danno…” he sighs contentedly against the other man’s collar bone, and falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** Heard this song the other day and just knew it was a perfect Steve McGarrett song. And this is the ep that popped immediately into my head. Destiny! I was actually aiming for something a little darker, but this is what came out instead. Oh, well. ::grins::


	8. Grenades Sold Separately

It was the perfect day for a cookout – clear skies, a cool breeze off the water, and plenty of food. Chin brought broccoli salad and ahi steaks. Kono contributed fruit salad, sliced cheese and crackers, and shrimp kabobs. Danny brought beer, juice for Grace, and hot dogs. Since Steve was hosting he really didn’t have to do anything but the grilling, but he added steaks and pasta salad to the offerings.

Kono and Grace made a sandcastle while the boys sat around talking about the case they’d just wrapped up involving gun runners out of Diamond Head. It was a nice, mellow day, especially once the meat was done and everyone sat around the table on the lanai stuffing themselves. Grace herself put away two hot dogs and a shrimp kebob, and as soon as dinner was finished she dragged out the plastic case she’d insisted on bringing with her.

“What toys did you bring?” Kono asked.

“Step-Stan bought me the whole set,” Grace said excitedly. “He found them at Ala Moana.”

“How nice of Stan,” Danny muttered. “The _whole_ set.”

“See? He’s you, Uncle Steve.” Grace held up one of the dolls, a ten inch figure that did in fact look a bit like Steve – brown plastic hair, tactical vest, cargo pants.

Danny grabbed it, laughing. “Does it come with kung fu grip?”

“I don’t know kung fu,” Steve protested, getting a closer look at the doll himself. 

“You can take the clothes off,” Grace explained. “He comes with two more outfits.” 

She passed over a miniature tuxedo and a blue Navy uniform. Steve’s brow furrowed.

“It comes with a Navy uniform?”

“Because you’re in the Navy, silly.”

Danny seemed to be enjoying himself posing the fully-articulated doll, putting the Steve look-alike into a variety of uncomfortable looking positions.

“Hey, be nice to the Navy doll,” Steve admonished, snatching it away.

“I like this one too,” Grace said, offering up another. This was a girl doll with dark brown nylon hair. It was wearing a blue bikini and had decidedly Asian features.

“That one looks like Kono,” Danny said.

“It _is_ Auntie Kono, Daddy,” Grace replied patiently. “I have the whole Five-0 set. See, she has a surf board.”

Chin accepted the little pink surfboard with an amused look on his face. 

“And her work clothes, and a dress for parties.” Grace handed them over to Kono. “I like the dress, it has lots of glitter.”

“This doll has bigger boobs than me,” Kono muttered, making Danny choke on his beer.

“I think the bigger issue,” Chin said dryly. “Is who’s making Five-0 dolls? I think I’d remember if someone approached me about that.”

“You’re right,” Steve said. He dug around in Grace’s doll box until he came up with a pistol, which he stuck in doll-Steve’s hand. “You can’t just go making dolls based on real people without permission, right?”

“Here’s you, Uncle Chin.” This doll was wearing a tac vest and holding a shotgun. Grace dutifully brought forth a little tuxedo and an HPD uniform.

“They got the cheekbones right,” Steve commented. He commenced hand-to-hand combat between doll-Steve and doll-Chin.

“Hey, what about me?” Danny asked. Grace grinned at him.

“The Danno doll is my favorite.” She pulled out the doll, which had a profusion of blonde nylon hair and wore a tac vest over a button down shirt and a teeny little tie.

“Ooh, look at the muscles!” Kono whistled in admiration.

“Oh, please.” Steve frowned. “Danny isn’t muscular like that.”

“Jealous?” Danny teased. “I have the best hair, too.”

“You have a fancy suit, too, Danno,” Grace said. She put it on the table, alongside a red Aloha shirt covered in pineapples.

“What the…what is _this_?” He held the offending shirt between his finger and his thumb, a disgusted look on his face.

“It’s the other outfit. _And_ all the dolls have this too.” Grace produced four little blue shirts emblazoned with Kamekona’s face.

“Well, that solves part of the mystery,” Chin remarked, studying one of the shirts.

“That still doesn’t explain this,” Danny complained, shaking the red shirt. “Everyone else gets some cool outfit and I get this ridiculous shirt? How is that fair? What about _my_ uniform? I’ve never even _worn_ one of these garish monstrosities.”

“Garish?”

“Yes, Steven, garish. As in ugly. Excessively hideous. Tasteless. _Tawdry_ , even.”

“Tawdry.”

“Yes, tawdry. Is this a Magnum PI doll? No. No, it is not. And there’s no reason it should be dressed like one.”

Steve grinned. “I don’t know, I kind of like it.”

“Of course you do. They got your cargo pants right, didn’t they? Nice. I suppose you come with a complete arsenal of handguns and grenades.”

“Grenades are sold separately, Danno,” Grace said.

“Oh, yeah?” Kono redressed her doll in the sparkly white dress. “What else comes separately?” 

“Step-Stan said soon there’s gonna be a car just like Daddy’s for the dolls to drive in. And maybe a playset of the office.”

“Check this out,” Chin said. He’d been rummaging in the plastic case and pulled out four plastic Five-0 badges, child-sized.

“Alright, seriously?” Danny moved his doll away from Steve’s, which was advancing on him fully armed. “Who decided we should be action figures? I doubt Kamekona has the capital for this kind of thing, though I don’t doubt for a minute he was involved.”

“Are there any bad guys for Five-0 to bring to justice?” Kono asked Grace.

“No. I use my Ken dolls, even though they’re bigger. But that’s okay, because Uncle Steve is a Super SEAL and he always wins.”

“Steve McGarrett _always_ gets his man,” Steve intoned in his TV announcer voice. Danny rolled his eyes.

“Only because he has excellent backup. And the world’s most patient partner,” he corrected. 

“Do you know what store Stan bought these in?” Chin asked Grace, pulling his doll out of Steve’s hand. Grace just shook her head.

“We’ll go down there tomorrow,” Steve decided. “Do some recon.”

Danny shook his head. “Recon? This isn’t a stealth mission, Steven. We just need to find out who’s selling these and put a stop to it. I hate to think of a studly Danny doll out there being molested by small children.”

“Very studly,” Kono agreed with a grin. She changed her doll out of the dress and into pants, shirt and tac vest. “Barbie dolls all over Oahu must be swooning right now.”

Danny grimaced. “You’re hilarious.”

“I think they should make a Sang Min doll,” Steve said, dressing his in the Navy uniform. “Little Steve wouldn’t mind kicking his ass.”

Danny glared.

“Uh…butt. I meant butt. Sorry, Grace.”

“That’s okay. Daddy says bad words all the time when he thinks I’m not listening.”

Danny flushed.

“Looking good, Boss.” Kono nodded her head at doll-Steve, who was now resplendent in his uniform.

“I know,” Steve replied a bit smugly. “Before we take these toymakers down, I think I want my own complete set.”

Danny laughed. “Why, so you can have pitched battles against your old GI Joes?”

“Were you poking around in my closet?”

“Mary told me you still had them. Do you take them out periodically and reenact SEAL missions? Cause I can totally see you doing that.”

Now it was Chin who laughed. “So can I.”

“Hey!” Steve protested. “Do I look like I’m five?”

“You act like it,” Danny said. “Small children like things that go boom just as much as you do. Grown-ups tend to value their lives just a little bit more.”

“Why can’t I value my life _and_ a good explosion at the same time? They don’t need to be mutually exclusive.”

“He’s got a point,” Chin said.

“Yeah, I can see I’m outnumbered here. Because you’re all crazy. How did I get to be the only sane person in Hawaii? Will someone please tell me that?” Danny waved his hands around and Steve snatched his doll and the red shirt at the same time. 

“Hey! Steve! No, don’t you put that shirt on me!”

The two men grappled, knocking over Danny’s mostly-empty beer bottle. Somehow amidst all the grabbing and smacking, Steve got the Danny doll dressed in the Aloha shirt, much to his evident glee.

“Ha! Look at Little Danny!” Steve held the doll up, using his other arm to block Danny’s attempts to grab it back. “Now he looks kama`aina!”

Danny crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. “Travesty,” he muttered.

“Come on, brah.” Kono poked him in the arm. “It doesn’t look so bad.”

“Uncle Steve, you’re not playing very nice,” Grace pointed out. “Don’t be a bully.”

“Yeah, bully,” Danny echoed. “That’s what comes of playing with Army dolls; think you can just boss everyone around.”

“And you didn’t have GI Joe dolls?” Steve asked, clearly not believing that could even be possible.

“No, I didn’t. I had Legos. I used my incredible brain power and imagination to build things, not pretend to blow stuff up.” Danny made a grab for his doll and missed. 

“He played Barbies too,” Grace said. “With Aunt Tessa and Aunt Angie.”

Three members of the team broke out into gales of laughter, while Danny scowled at his daughter.

“Traitor.”

Grace giggled. “Well, you did. Aunt Tessa told me. And you play with me sometimes too.”

“No wonder you didn’t blow stuff up,” Steve hooted. “You were too busy finding the right shoes to go with the sparkly evening gown.”

“Oh, and I suppose you never had to play dolls with Mary?” Danny countered. Steve grinned.

“Nope. She played GI Joe with me.”

“That actually explains a lot.”

Kono finally took pity on Danny and stole his doll back from Steve. Danny immediately removed the offending red pineapple shirt and tossed it back into the plastic case. Steve smirked.

“When I get my own set, I’m going to make the Danno doll wear that shirt forever.”

“After I’ve dropped my sweet and innocent daughter off, I’ll explain to you exactly why that’s never going to happen,” Danny replied with a dangerous expression on his face.

“Maybe we should have dessert first?” Chin suggested, fighting back a grin. He dropped his doll back into the case. “Steve?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I have ice cream in the freezer and sundae toppings on the counter.”

Grace cheered and hastily threw everything else into the plastic case until the Five-0 dolls were out of sight. She ran inside Steve’s house with Kono in tow to get everything ready for the sundaes. 

“So, we’ll meet up tomorrow morning at HQ, and then head over to Ala Moana,” Steve said, leaning on the table. “We can haul the seller in for questioning until we get a lead on the mastermind.”

“Mastermind? Really?” Danny shook his head. “I’m sure this isn’t an illicit toy ring, Steven. Why don’t you back it down a notch so that we aren’t there guns blazing tomorrow scaring innocent people half to death.”

“Danny…”

“He’s right,” Chin said. “This can probably be chalked up to someone trying to make a few bucks trading on our name and positive image in the community.”

Danny grinned. “Yeah. Positive image.”

“I mean it,” the other man insisted. “If we can sign some sort of contract, set some limits, I don’t see why the dolls couldn’t still be sold.”

“Hmmm.” Danny looked thoughtful. “You might be right. We can make sure a portion of the proceeds go to a charity or something.”

“Fine,” Steve conceded. “We’ll try things the easy way first. But if we do end up signing off on these dolls, there’s one thing that absolutely has to be changed.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Grenades _cannot_ be sold separately.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** I was sitting on the couch with my son, while he scrolled through the toy section on Amazon, and I told him I wished I could have a Super Steve action figure. This idea sprang from that, and it was too funny not to write. Special thanks to my boy and my hubby for their input.


	9. Sick Day

Steve moaned piteously. “Pull the plug, Danno. I’m begging you. Put me out of my misery.”

Danny merely pressed a kiss to his feverish forehead and tucked the blankets more securely around him. “It’s just the flu, you big baby. If you got sick more than once every decade you’d be better prepared.”

That dragged out another moan. Steve knew this was some kind of punishment, probably because just last month he’d been showing off his good health in the face of Danny’s sinus infection. Boasting that germs were no match for a SEAL, which had earned him a Chuck Norris comment he hadn’t understood. Now here he was taking an actual sick day because he was too achy and congested to get out of bed for any length of time.

“Sorry,” he said.

“For hacking your germs on my side of the bed? You should be. I’m gonna have to bleach everything in here. If I get sick you don’t even want to know the retribution I will rain down on your head.” Despite the snarky words Danny had been nothing but patient and gentle with Steve, which only made him feel worse.

“Sorry for ruining the weekend.”

Danny sat on the edge of the bed, his hand resting on Steve’s chest. “You aren’t ruining anything. Grace is old enough not to expect Super Fun Adventure Time whenever it’s her weekend.”

Steve started to laugh but it quickly turned to coughing. Danny handed him the glass of water from the nightstand and unwrapped a cough drop to pop into his mouth.

“Nice and easy, babe.”

“This sucks.”

“Yes. Yes it does. But I’m sure your Super SEAL powers will kick this flu in the ass before you know it.”

“You owe a quarter,” Grace said from the doorway. Danny rolled his eyes.

“Your timing is impeccable as always.”

“How you feelin’, Uncle Steve?”

“Like I ought to update my will,” Steve sighed.

“You’re such a drama king.” Grace came around the other side of the bed and flopped down on her stomach. “Is Dad taking good care of you?”

“I guess.”

“You guess? I’ve done nothing but wait on you hand and foot and you _guess_? Every time I come near you I put myself in peril of catching the creeping crud and this is the thanks I get. And I was gonna make you soup, too.” Danny’s arms waved around as he lamented being underappreciated. Steve and Grace shared a grin.

“So, I’ve been thinking about my birthday,” Grace said apropos of nothing.

“You just had a birthday,” Danny pointed out. “A very nice birthday with boys and presents and everything.”

“Yeah, but next year I’ll be thirteen and that’s a big one.”

“Every birthday Step-Stan throws you is a big one.”

Grace nodded. “That’s because he understands girl birthdays, Dad. I’m too old for pizza parties.”

“What did you have in mind?” Steve asked, moving the cough drop around with his tongue. He hated the honey-lemon taste of it, but couldn’t argue against its effectiveness.

“I was thinking something really fun, like a theme party with costumes maybe.”

“Costumes?” Danny echoed, the expression on his face a mix of disbelief and consternation. “And what’s wrong with pizza?”

Grace rolled on her side and propped up on one elbow. “Costumes. You know, like it could be a 50s party and all the girls would wear poodle skirts and the boys would wear leather jackets.”

Steve glanced at Danny before nodding. “That sounds like it might be fun.”

“I know, right? Or a 70s party maybe and it could be all disco.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just do a beach party?” Danny asked.

Grace rolled her eyes. “Dad, I’m not nine anymore. This will be my first teenager party and it has to be special.”

“Monkey, there’s almost a year until thirteen rolls around. Do we have to plan things right now?”

Steve hid his grin at the sound of desperation in Danny’s voice. It wasn’t funny, not really, because he knew that his partner was feeling the loss of his daughter’s childhood more keenly with each passing year. Danny lived in fear of the time when Grace decided she’d rather be hanging out with her friends than her dad, though Steve honestly hoped that she wouldn’t be like that.

“If it’s gonna be awesome we need to plan it early,” Grace explained patiently.

“Well,” Steve suggested. “Why don’t we come back to it after you’ve got something more definite in mind? Then we can work out the details together.”

Grace gave a put-upon sigh that was such a Danny sound Steve had to fight not to laugh. “Oh, okay. Jeez. But just so you know, you two are going to do all the heavy lifting.”

“What else is new?” Danny grumbled, but his equanimity seemed to have been restored. “I have to run to the store to get soup fixings, can you keep an eye on Uncle Steve?”

“I can keep an eye on myself,” Steve protested. 

“Are you making Nonna’s chicken soup?” Grace asked.

“Can you think of anything better to kick this cold out of him?”

“Can you get some cookies while you’re out?”

“Chocolate chip?”

Grace pondered the question for a minute. “I think chocolate grahams this time. We can put them in the fridge when you get back and then tonight they’ll be nice and cold.”

“Okay. Steve, anything you need me to pick up?”

“You already have a whole pharmacy here, so I think I’m set.” Steve nodded his head at the dresser, which was covered with cough syrup, Tylenol, fever packs, tissues, a digital thermometer, and several different boxes of over-the-counter cold medicines.

“I shouldn’t be gone more than a half hour. Grace, why don’t you go downstairs and make Uncle Steve some tea. Put lots of honey in it.”

“Like I’ve never seen you kissing,” Grace grumbled, though she obediently hopped off the bed and headed down the stairs. 

As soon as she was out of sight Danny collapsed on top of Steve, burying his face in his partner’s shoulder. “Costumes, for the love of God.”

Steve patted him on the back. “She’s growing up, Danno. It’s kind of inevitable.”

“I know,” he sighed. He pushed back up and pressed a wet kiss to Steve’s cheek. “You need to get better, Steven, so I can kiss you properly.”

“You can kiss me properly now.”

“I love you, I do, but not enough to share your cold. I’ll be back soon.” Danny gave him one more chaste kiss before heading out. Steve could hear him talking with Grace downstairs, though he couldn’t hear anything they were saying. 

He closed his eyes, just for a minute, but he must’ve drifted off because when he opened them again Grace was sitting on the bed playing some kind of game on her iPod. His tea was cooling on the nightstand in the mug with Grace’s much younger face printed on the side.

“Ungh,” he groaned. His sinuses were completely clogged and his mouth tasted nasty from the cough drop that had stayed tucked between his cheek and his jaw while he slept.

“Hey there,” Grace said. “Your tea’s cold.”

“Danny back yet?” Steve pushed himself up and grabbed a handful of tissues.

“He had to stop in at the office.” She held up her hand to forestall his question. “He said to tell you, quote, that no-one needs thrown in a shark cage, so stand down and don’t worry.”

He couldn’t help but laugh, and then cough, bent almost in half. Grace rubbed his back until he caught his breath. “I’m gonna reheat your tea, okay?”

Steve nodded gratefully, and she slid off the bed and slipped out of the room. He took the opportunity to trudge to the bathroom to relieve himself and splash some water on his face. He also gave his teeth a vigorous brushing and swirled some mouthwash around to get rid of the taste of that cough drop. Feeling a little refreshed he made his way back to bed, ridiculously exhausted by the short trip. He tried not to worry that Danny had gotten called in for a case; he hated the idea of his partner out there without him watching his back, much as he trusted Chin and Kono.

“Here we go, nice and hot.” Grace came back in and carefully set the steaming mug on the nightstand. “Feeling any better?”

“Not really,” he admitted.

“Poor Uncle Steve.” She kissed his cheek, and then took a seat at the foot of the bed, knees drawn up. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me anything, Gracie.” Steve held the mug between his hands and took a sip of the tea; it moved with soothing warmth down his tortured throat. He and Grace had developed a strong relationship over the years, and it always pleased and surprised him to have her confidence.

“How can you tell if someone really likes you? Like, _likes_ you?” Grace flushed and refused to look anywhere but at her hands. Steve was vaguely aware that his mouth was gaping open but that seemed a small concern compared to the conversation he was about to have. He mentally cursed Danny for not being there.

“Is there someone at school you like?” he asked carefully. _Please not Tommy_.

Grace shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Steve drank more tea and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t somehow emotionally scar Danny’s daughter for life. Why wasn’t she asking her mother about this? He threw some curses Rachel’s way as well.

“Twelve can be a tough age,” he said finally, feeling like an idiot as soon as the words left his mouth. “I know it was for me. You’re all hormones and stuff right now, so you need to be really careful. With boys.”

That earned Steve a look of fond exasperation, an expression he’d become quite familiar with since meeting Danny; at least Grace was looking at him now.

“I don’t need to talk about _that_.”

“Oh. Well. Good.” _Thank God_.

“Did you have a crush on Danno before you were in love?” Grace hugged her knees to her chest. “Was it romantic?”

“He punched me in the face,” Steve said, a nostalgic grin spreading across his face.

“Oh, come on! Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. We’re guys, Gracie. Romance doesn’t come natural. A fist to the jaw, that we understand.” It had been a solid hit, he remembers that well enough. Danny had sent the message that he would not be bullied, that Steve being a SEAL and the governor’s pet didn’t intimidate him at all. That move had earned Steve’s respect, admiration, and the first glimmer of deeper interest. Even if Danny hadn’t eventually called him on it, he would have to admit that he spent a lot of time trying to impress his new partner; why else hang a guy off a roof?

“So you’re saying boys can’t be romantic.”

“No, I’m saying they have to work at it. Girls were born with the romance gene, that’s why it’s easier for you.”

“There’s no romance gene,” Grace said, rolling her eyes.

“Sure there is,” Steve insisted. The hot tea was making his nose run, so he set it aside and grabbed some tissues. “If a guy tries to be all mushy, that’s usually a sign he likes you.”

“Really?”

“So what’s his name?” _Please not Tommy_. 

Grace sighed. “David Sutor. He’s new and he’s really cute and sometimes I think he likes me. Like yesterday. He gave me his pudding cup at lunch, but then he ignored me for the rest of the day. And for the record, I didn’t ask for the pudding.”

Steve made a mental note of the boy’s name; he’d have Chin run a background check. He wondered how to approach this. Should he give one of Danny’s standard _Boys Are Evil_ speeches, or try to actually be helpful? He looked into Grace’s big, soulful brown eyes and shook his head ruefully. Like he had a choice.

“Sounds to me like this David likes you. The pudding is a good clue.”

“So why ignore me?”

Steve shrugged. “Maybe he’s shy. You remember what it was like being the new kid in school. Plus, you’re the prettiest girl in Hawaii and he probably finds that a little intimidating.”

“I am not,” Grace protested, but she blushed and grinned. “So…maybe I should talk to him? Or bring him something, like cookies?”

“I’d talk to him first,” Steve advised. “Feel him out, see if he really is interested in you. Could be he just doesn’t like pudding.”

He blew his nose, four tissues worth, and reclaimed the tea. Grace seemed to be thinking over what he’d said, and he sincerely hoped he hadn’t screwed this up. He was just swallowing another mouthful when Grace asked her next question.

“Is twelve too young for kissing?”

Steve choked on the tea and hastily set it back on the nightstand, deciding he’d had quite enough of that beverage for one day. He coughed, which only got his nose running again, and by the time the fit was over his face was beet red and he’d gone through six more tissues.

Grace grinned at him. “Bad question?”

Steve held up his hands in surrender. “I think you should talk to your dad about that.”

“I thought I was,” she replied softly, the smile falling away.

For a long moment Steve wasn’t sure what Grace was talking about. She kept looking at him so earnestly, with that same heart-on-my-sleeve expression that was so at home on her father’s face, and he replayed the exchange in his head. As it settled in he felt tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with the flu.

“Grace,” was all he could say. She quickly filled the empty space between them with words, another habit she’d gotten from her father.

“It’s okay if you don’t want that,” she said, talking fast. “I know I’m not really your kid or anything, but I love you and I think about you like a dad. Danno says hearts are magic because you can fit so many people in them, and I thought….well, since you’re with him now maybe there’d be some room in there for me too.”

Happiness welled up in Steve like a bubble threatening to pop and spray joy on everything. He’d always secretly thought of Grace as his daughter too, though he never said anything to Danny about it; he didn’t want there to be any resentment between them, didn’t want to be another Step-Stan. Having Grace acknowledge him like that, though – it was like every dream he’d ever had was coming true. He was part of a family again.

He reached over and grabbed hold of Grace’s ankle, giving it a tug. She immediately crawled up next to him and let him pull her into a tight hug. “I love you too, you know. Always have. Grace Face.”

“Super Steve.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. David Sutor had better tread very carefully if he wanted to survive to see thirteen. Nobody messed with _Steve’s_ little girl.

“Is this a private party or can anyone join?” Danny asked from the doorway. His arms were crossed over his chest but Steve could see the smile in his eyes, which looked suspiciously shiny.

“Invite only, Danno,” he replied with a grin.

“Be nice,” Grace scolded, pulling out of Steve’s arms. “You’ll thank me when you taste the soup.”

“Think you can give me a hand chopping veggies?” Danny didn’t move from his spot and Steve started to wonder if he was angry. Had he heard what Grace had said?

“Sure thing, Danno. You want more tea…Dad?”

Steve’s breath caught at that one small word and suddenly it didn’t matter if Danny got mad over this – he was so blissfully happy he just couldn’t bring himself to care whether he was right to feel that way or not.

“I’m good for now. Thanks, Gracie.”

“’Kay.” She kissed his cheek, then slid off the bed. As she passed Danny she went up on her tiptoes to kiss him as well. “Did you remember the cookies?”

“Did you really think I’d forget something that important? You wound me.”

“You always hurt the ones you love, right? I’ll get started on the chopping.”

“Be careful.”

Steve watched her bounce out of the room. _My girl_. Danny finally moved, coming to sit on the edge of the bed next to his partner.

“Still congested?”

“Not so much. The tea helped.”

Danny wrapped one hand around the back of Steve’s neck and nodded. “You still feel a little warm.

“Did you hear?” Steve couldn’t help but ask.

“Heard enough.”

“Are you mad?”

“Should I be?” Danny pressed his forehead to Steve’s. “Of course she loves you. So do I. Are you gonna freak out about this, you emotional pygmy? If so, please wait until tomorrow after Grace goes home.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Steve assured him. “You know I love Grace like she was my own.”

“One of your few redeeming qualities,” Danny agreed. “You’ve never let me down, and I know I can trust you with my daughter. _Our_ daughter.”

“Our daughter,” Steve echoed. He knew he probably had a great big goofy grin on his face but he didn’t care. He pulled in a breath to say something else when he got caught in another coughing fit, hacking hard enough to bring tears to his eyes; he half expected to see a lung by the time he finally got himself under control. Danny handed him another cough drop.

“You okay? Maybe you should go to the emergency room.” Danny got him a fresh glass of water from the bathroom tap. “You might need a nebulizer or something. I suppose it’s possible to get pneumonia even here in paradise.”

“I don’t have pneumonia.”

“Like you’d know,” Danny retorted, waving his hand dismissively. “I’m sure it’d take something much stronger to take you down anyway, Super SEAL. Bubonic plague, maybe, or ebola.”

“Thanks for the positive thoughts.”

“How are you feeling?” Danny asked, sitting back down next to Steve. “Really?”

“Honestly? I never thought I could feel this good when I feel this bad.”

Danny chuckled and ran his hand down the side of Steve’s flushed face. “Welcome to fatherhood, babe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** Sorry for the long absence. I moved over a month ago and I still have unpacked boxes mocking me from the kitchen. Apparently my muse doesn’t like the smaller place, since he hasn’t been hanging around much. I’m trying to entice him back with brownies.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like this little Steve-Grace fic. I figured he’d have to be confined to bed to go through that whole conversation with Grace. LOL! Plus, sick Steve can be just so pathetic. ::grins:: Keep your fingers crossed that I can finish some of the billion other half-finished fics for this series.


	10. Someday My Prince

Rosemarie Magliulo was a wizened old woman who was known to everyone in the neighborhood as Nonna Rose. She always had cookies for the kids that used her yard to play Red Rover or Freeze Tag, which of course made hers the premier yard for all kinds of games. The grownups would whisper about her, half-joking comments about the Evil Eye and the Sight, but Nonna Rose received plenty of adult visitors as well. It was a poorly kept secret that if you were facing a major life decision, you’d go see her and not only would you get amazingly accurate advice about what to do, you’d also get fed.

Danny Williams was lucky enough to live next door to Nonna Rose. Sometimes when his parents went out she’d watch him and his sisters. He would always remember that she had a squeaky plastic cover over her upstairs sofa, and a crystal dish filled with peppermints on the hutch in the dining room. Nonna Rose kept a box of toys and books that had belonged to her own children for him to play with, things like wooden trains and picture books and blocks painted to look like buildings so he could make a city to race his Hot Wheels around in.

Whenever Nonna Rose had a visitor with questions she’d send Danny and his sisters down to the basement. There was a whole other living room there, the one used for entertaining because the upstairs room was fancy and just for show; there was no plastic on the furniture in the basement.

“Watch your brother,” she’d tell the girls, but they never did. Tina would sprawl all over the couch and watch soap operas on the little TV set. Nancy would have her nose buried in some stupid romance novel. And Danny would sometimes sneak back to the top of the stairs and listen to Nonna Rose advise women on their love lives and men on job offers. He might only have been five years old, but he knew Nonna Rose was special; she knew things no-one else did.

She’d catch him, of course, and give him a wink as she showed her visitor to the door. Danny would always blush and run back down the stairs, returning to whatever game he’d been playing. One day, though, he stayed there on the top step, hands curled over the top of the half door.

“You have a question, Daniel?” Nonna Rose asked. Her face was wreathed in wrinkles but her eyes twinkled with amusement. Some of the other kids in the neighborhood were scared of her, but not Danny.

“Can you tell my future, Nonna?” he asked.

She leaned against the other side of the door and looked as if she was giving his request serious consideration. Nonna Rose _never_ talked down to kids or made them feel as if their concerns were insignificant.

“Your future isn’t set yet, _caro mio_ ,” she replied. “You have many more choices to make.”

“Will I find a handsome prince, like Ms. Bylicki?”

Nonna Rose laughed, and it always surprised Danny that such a loud sound could come from such a tiny woman. “You are very young to worry about finding _amore_ , Daniel.”

“But I will, right?” He was too old now to still carry around the desire to marry his mom, but he wanted to be someone’s special someone. Oh, he knew his parents loved him, but they loved his sisters too, and the new baby that would be coming soon. Danny wanted the whole spotlight for himself.

Nonna Rose put one arthritic hand on his head and her eyes got a funny, faraway look in them. Danny held his breath.

“ _Sì_ ,” she said after a while. “There is a handsome prince waiting for you. You will know him by his broken heart and lonely soul. _Accoramento_.”

“He sounds sad,” Danny whispered.

“ _Sì_ , he is. But you will make him happy. You will fill the empty spaces inside each other.”

Nonna Rose pulled her hand away, and it trembled just a little. Danny’s eyes were wide and he felt like he’d been touched by magic; it tingled down the back of his neck.

“How will I find him?”

“You will have to wait many years, _caro mio_. You will first make a long journey of the heart and travel across the sea.”

Danny was a little disappointed by that. He wanted to find his prince right now, and make him not be so sad. But Nonna Rose was calling his sisters and pulling out chicken cutlets for lunch, and the time for asking questions was over. He never forgot what she said, though. He never spoke of it, either, not even when Nonna Rose passed away six years later and so many people got up to speak about how she’d changed their lives.

Even as Danny grew older, putting down deeper roots and settling into a life in New Jersey not far from where he’d grown up, he never forgot Nonna’s words. Some nights he’d dream of a shadowy figure with sad eyes, waiting for him somewhere far away. Every year he spent in Jersey, every year he tried to make a real life for himself with Rachel, he felt his prince getting further and further away; until finally he wondered if the decisions he’d made had changed that future for him irrevocably.

*o*o*o*

Hawaii was supposed to be a place to start over, to reinvent his life. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his choice, and it didn’t matter that he was leaving almost everything else behind. His family told him to make the best of it, despite their own sorrow at losing him and Grace. He was in such emotional turmoil that he didn’t even register that part of Nonna’s prediction was coming true – he was traveling across the sea.

So Danny made a new life that resembled his old life as much as possible. He still had Grace, though much less of her than he wanted, and he still had his career, but there was a gaping hole where his family used to be. An empty space that used to be full of Sunday dinners with his parents, football games with his brothers-in-law, and holidays when he’d dress up like Santa for the kids or spend all night hiding Easter eggs in his mother’s garden.

Of course, after Steve McGarrett barreled into his life, stealing him from HPD after first stealing his case, Danny found himself nostalgic for the long, empty hours.

“Will you slow down, Speed Racer?” Danny clutched the door handle in a vain effort to keep from getting whipped into the passenger side window. “We won’t catch this guy if we’re a burning heap of twisted metal on the side of the road!”

“Relax, Danno.” Steve deftly swerved around a tanker truck, narrowly missing a head-on collision with a minivan.

“ _Relax_? Relax, he tells me.” Danny really wanted to shoot a blistering glare at his partner but he was afraid to take his eyes off the road. “Let me guess. You had the top score in Pole Position?”

“Why are you so uptight?” Steve wasn’t as concerned with watching the road, and looked over at Danny with an amused expression on his face. “I’ve never crashed us yet, have I?”

“Yet being the key word in that sentence. And face front! Are you trying to give me heart failure?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Sure. Of course you do.” Danny’s foot stomped down on a non-existent brake as they very nearly clipped the fender of another car while Steve passed on the right. “I’m sure you took crazy derby driving courses in SEAL school, or whatever, but _real_ people don’t drive this way!”

“Unlike real people, I always get my man,” Steve replied smugly. Then the car was in a nausea-inducing spin, the smell of burned rubber making Danny lament the shortened life span of his tires even as he squeezed his eyes shut and held on for dear life.

The car had barely screeched to a halt before Steve was out and running, gun drawn. Danny scrambled to follow, fighting with his seatbelt. He needn’t have bothered; by the time he got out of the Camaro his partner already had their guy out of his vehicle and cuffed, and even made a token attempt at the Miranda rights. 

“Told you.”

“I hate you,” Danny said passionately as he holstered his own weapon.

“No you don’t,” Steve grinned.

*o*o*o*

The truth of the matter was that Danny couldn’t hate Steve, even though sometimes he really tried. McGarrett made him crazy, what with his penchant for blowing stuff up and diving in front of bullets. Worse, he involved Danny in these life-threatening activities and that was just unacceptable. Except…he knew he couldn’t be anywhere else but at Steve’s side to keep watch his back.

Danny’s hollowed-out spaces were being filled now with Longboards shared out on the lanai, and team dinners at the Hilton, and surfing lessons with Kono. Steve had given him a new family, a new purpose, and a distraction from the crapstorm his personal life often was these days.

Still, it didn’t click for Danny until the anniversary of John McGarrett’s death rolled around. He’d been waiting for it, nervously eyeing the calendar a month ahead. He wasn’t sure what to expect from his partner when the day finally arrived, but Steve strolled into HQ like it was just a regular day. Danny kept an eye on him throughout the day as they interviewed some witnesses and followed a couple of dead-end leads.

“Can we eat?” he asked well after the normal lunch hour. “I’m running on fumes here.”

Steve shot him a look, then nodded. “Sure.”

Danny bit his lip to keep from asking if his partner was okay, because it was a stupid question; he could see the tension in Steve’s face, the tightness around his eyes. He wished he had something to say, some magical phrase that would take some of his hurt away.

“Diner okay?”

“Yeah, that’s good. As long as they have food, it really doesn’t make a difference.” The diner was close and he really was hungry. He thought it wouldn’t hurt Steve to get some food in him, either.

“After lunch we’ll head back, see if Chin’s been able to put anything together.” Steve parked the car and Danny didn’t say anything until they’d gone inside and ordered.

“You know, we could just call it a day. We’ve been running into nothing but brick walls. Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow, with fresh eyes.”

Steve frowned. “I’m not giving up yet.”

“I’m not asking you to give up. Just…take the rest of the day off. You know, just…relax.” And okay, he knew that wasn’t going to fly as soon as he said it.

“Relax? In the middle of a case?” If anything, Steve’s face got even more closed off. “This is about my dad, isn’t it?”

“Of course this is about your dad!” Danny felt exasperated, and sorry he even brought this up. “It’s okay to take some time, Steve. We all understand.”

“I’m fine.”

Danny snorted derisively. “I know you’re like some superhuman machine, but it’s okay to need some time to process your feelings.”

“What are you, my shrink?” The words dripped with sarcasm, but Danny could see the truth in his eyes; grief and pain and heartbreak.

_You will know him by his broken heart_.

Danny jerked back from the words, startled at the clarity of Nonna Rose’s voice in his head. He accidentally knocked into his water glass, tipping it over and sending all that water splashing right into Steve’s lap.

“Jesus, Danny!” Steve jumped to his feet and started pulling napkins from the dispenser on the table, blotting ineffectually at his saturated cargo pants. “What the _hell_?”

Danny could only stare, at a loss for words for probably the first time in his life. _Steve_? _Steve_ was the handsome prince he’d been waiting for since he was five? No way. And yet…his life _had_ changed when they’d met. His own loneliness had faded away, but that was only half of the equation.

“Are you lonely?” he blurted out, fingers clutching the edge of the table.

Steve froze, staring at Danny like he was growing a second head. The waitress chose that moment to return with their meals and she stood there uncertainly, tray balanced on one hand.

“We’ll need that to go,” Steve said, never taking his eyes off Danny’s mortified face. 

“I’m…uh…” Danny fled; there was no other word for the way he pushed back from the table and practically ran to the car. Steve had the keys, of course, but he slid into the driver’s seat anyway and adjusted it for his smaller stature. Then he repeatedly banged his head on the steering wheel.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Why the hell couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? Was he trying to ruin everything?

The passenger door opened and Steve slid in, setting two Styrofoam to-go containers on his water dampened lap. He held the keys out for Danny and they stared at each other for a long moment before Danny took them and started the car. He automatically drove in the direction of Steve’s house.

The silence between them was uncomfortable and Danny didn’t have the first clue what to say. He still couldn’t get over the idea that his partner was his prince, but once he’d had that thought he _knew_ it was right. Which meant, presumably, that Steve had feelings of some kind for him, unless the universe was feeling particularly cruel. True, there’d been some mutual flirting between them since the very first day, but sometimes even the straightest guys could come off really gay under the right circumstances. Danny didn’t think that was the case this time, though. 

“I mean, there’s something there, right?”

“What?” Steve asked, startled.

“Thing is, she was never wrong. You know?” Danny took one hand off the wheel to gesture with. He was aware that he was babbling, and not very coherently, but once the words started to come there was no stopping them.

“She was right about the DeMauro triplets, and Mr. Hencricks taking the job at the smaller firm. I mean, no-one thought that would work and now he’s like the CEO or COO or something else with three letters.”

“Danny, are you okay? Did you hit your head or something?”

“Maybe this is punishment for the time I broke her lamp. Which was Skippy Detweiler’s fault anyway. But why else would it be you? You’re supposed to make my life better, not try to kill me every time we catch a case.” Danny frowned. He should’ve kicked Skippy’s ass when he had the chance.

“You’re sounding a little crazy right now,” Steve said carefully, his hand drifting to the door handle.

“What’re you gonna do, jump out into traffic while the car is still moving?” Danny jabbed a finger in his partner’s direction. “See, this? This is what I’m talking about. My prince shouldn’t be able to consider jumping from a moving vehicle as a viable option. Or airplanes, for that matter.”

“Wait, what? _Prince_?”

“Yes, prince. Soulmate. One true love.” Danny pulled into Steve’s driveway and turned off the engine. “You know, the perfect person for me, the one who…who…makes everything _better_.”

Steve was making a face that was somewhere between wary and seriously alarmed. “And you think that’s me?”

Danny shrugged. “I don’t know. Nonna Rose thought so. Clearly she had a bigger sense of humor than I was aware of.”

“Who the hell is Nonna Rose?”

“She was the old lady who lived next door to me when I was a kid. She could see the future.” Danny waved his hand dismissively. “The point is, what do I do now?”

Steve was looking more concerned by the minute, and Danny would’ve laughed if the situation wasn’t so serious. He just wasn’t sure how to feel about all this, though he thought he might start leaning towards guardedly optimistic.

“She saw the future.”

“The problem is, neither one of us has the best track record with relationships, right?” Danny leaned his head back against the seat and sighed. “Is it even worth the risk? I don’t know what to do.”

“Right.” Steve pulled out his phone and made a call. “Chin? Yeah, Danny and I are taking the rest of the day. He had some bad clams or something. It’s not pretty. Yeah, I’ll let you know.”

Danny struggled to get a grip on his thoughts, which were racing. Was he attracted to Steve? Well, even a blind person would be; he was incredibly handsome and beautifully put together, ridiculous cargo pants aside. He had a huge heart beneath that steely SEAL exterior, and an over-developed sense of responsibility that was sometimes quite disarming.

“Come on, Danno. Let’s go inside.”

They walked in together, Steve still carrying the to-go containers, but Danny kept right on going to the lanai when his partner stopped in the kitchen. He dropped into a chair and ran a hand through his hair. Steve joined him a few minutes later, having changed into dry pants and holding out a beer.

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Danny took a long swallow of his Longboard first, and then he told Steve all about Nanna Rose and her long ago prediction. He also mentioned two other occasions when he’d consulted with so-called fortune tellers, and how one of them also indicated this his one true love would be found across a large body of water. He could tell his partner found the whole thing pretty far-fetched, but to his credit he listened without comment until Danny was finished.

“So you think I’m your…ah…”

“Prince,” Danny said helpfully.

Steve grinned. “Right. Prince.”

Danny leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “The thing is, Steven, all I had going in my life was Grace until I met you. You gave me a reason to want to get out of bed in the morning, but more importantly you gave me a friend. I just wish I could give some of that to you.”

Steve’s expression softened and he reached out, putting his hand on Danny’s arm. “I know I don’t always show it but you help me a lot, Danno. Every day. You’re my anchor.”

“Is that a Navy thing?” Danny joked half-heartedly. He could read the truth in Steve’s eyes and felt a wide smile spread on his own face. How could he ever have doubted Nonna Rose?

“It’s a you and me thing,” Steve corrected. His hand slid down Danny’s forearm until he’d twisted their fingers together.

“I waited for you a long time.”

“Sorry I was so late.”

“I’m willing to let it slide,” Danny said affably. He leaned back in the chair but didn’t let go of Steve’s hand. He felt completely at ease, and content in a way he’d never been before; he sent Nonna Rose a warm thank you. _Grazie mille_.

“I wish you could’ve met my dad,” Steve murmured, his gaze on their clasped hands.

“Me too, babe. I’m so sorry.”

“He would’ve liked you.”

Silence grew between them but it wasn’t uncomfortable this time. They drank their beers and listened to the surf, and took solace in each other. When Steve spoke again his voice was hushed.

“The answer to your question? It’s no.”

Danny looked over at him, confused. “What question?”

“I’m not lonely. I haven’t been since the day you drew down on me in the garage.”

“You stole evidence,” Danny pointed out.

“I stole more than that, Danno.”

“Yeah. You did.” He squeezed Steve’s hand, his thumb stroking little circles over one knuckle. “I’m glad you did.”

“Me too.”

“You think we can eat now?” Danny asked plaintively. Steve laughed, standing and pulling Danny up with him.

“Wouldn’t want you to waste away, partner.”

“You really don’t,” Danny agreed. He wrapped his arms around Steve, hugging him tightly, and pressed a kiss to the side of his neck.

“Come on, Commander. You can wine and dine me.”

“Can we drink a toast to Nonna Rose?” Steve asked. He slung his arm across Danny’s shoulders as they headed for the kitchen.

“All things considered, I feel like that would be an excellent idea.”

_You will fill the empty spaces inside each other._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** There I was, minding my own business and dutifully working on a rather lengthy fic, when smiles2go flung the following bunny at me:
> 
> _he grew up beside the gypsy fortuneteller masquarading as a psychic. he'd sneak over over and hide on the back porch and listen in when she had sessions. She always knew and brought him cookies and ruffled his hair. "Your prince will come" she'd whisper theatrically. "You'll know him and he you, the moment your eyes meet." and of course he does. but his prince doesn't have a clue._
> 
> And I thought…eh. I’ll write it down and file it away. Only it stayed filed for exactly one day and then my muse found it and took off running. This is the result, which seems a bit disjointed to me, but full of so much fluffy goodness I’ve decided to overlook that. The bunny didn’t come with a fandom, but I thought it would be fun to work it into H50, though it might’ve been a more natural fit in the Sentinel verse. 
> 
> Thanks for the inspiration, Smiles, but can you cut me some slack for a little while? I need to play with my own bunnies! LOL!


	11. Steve of the Jungle

Danny Williams hated his life. More than when he and Rachel were going through the divorce, more than when he had to move from Jersey to Hawaii because Rachel got remarried and took his daughter half way around the world. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to being in this godforsaken jungle. He’d lost his backpack, he was pretty sure his ankle was sprained, his whole body felt like one giant bruise, and a headache was pounding away at his temples; he blamed the last on the unusually high altitude and dehydration.

“Find a familiar landmark. Right. Oh, good! There’s a tree. That’s helpful.” Danny stopped walking and took a moment to catch his breath. His t-shirt was soaked with sweat and he was getting a stitch in his side.

The adventure trip had been Gabby’s idea, and he tried not to think bad thoughts about his fiancée; it’s not like she’d planned for everything to go wrong.

 

_“I love working at the museum,” she said earnestly. “But sometimes I just want to scream, it gets so stifling and stagnant in there. I want to go out and do something adventurous.”_

_“I understand that,” Danny replied. “But can’t we do something adventurous here? Like hang-gliding or boar hunting or touring pineapple farms? For you I would subject myself to pineapple.”_

_Gabby just laughed. “We need to have a real adventure, Danny. You just leave it to me, okay? I’ll plan everything. How do you feel about Peru?”_

Well, the truth was he didn’t think much of Peru right at the moment. Sure, Lima had been fine, and the Cloud Forest had been breathtaking. It was the flash flood that had gotten him, took him down a hill and dumped him into some disease-infested Amazon tributary; he’d nearly drowned before the waters deposited him on a muddy bank in the middle of who-knows-where. He should’ve stayed on Oahu; he got plenty of excitement just being a cop.

“And I thought Hawaii was too green,” he muttered. All around him the jungle was verdant and thick and full of the sound of strange birds and chattering monkeys. He was keeping parallel to the river that had carried him away, certain he’d find some kind of encampment along the shore if he walked far enough. Sure, everyone said the best thing to do when you got lost was to stand still and wait for rescue to come to you, but what if Gabby and the others thought he was dead? Or something had happened to them, too?

Danny shook those unproductive thoughts from his mind. Gabby was fine, and he’d be fine too. So what if his ankle was throbbing in time with his heartbeat? So what if he was too afraid of killer microbes to drink the water? Someone had to be living nearby and he was determined to find them.

Just as he was getting up the energy to move again a low growl froze him in place. Looking cautiously around, he found himself pinned in place by a pair of golden eyes staring at him from a furry, spotted face. Jaguar. Danny’s skin flushed with fear as he tried to remember what to do during an encounter such as this. Make noise? Climb a tree? No, that was for bears. Their guide had told them that the big cats mostly stayed away from humans, but this one seemed not to have gotten that memo.

“Hey. Nice kitty.” Danny followed the cat with his eyes as it moved, keeping the rest of himself as still as possible. It didn’t seem to be coming closer, but it certainly wasn’t running the other way either. He really, really hoped he wasn’t standing in front of the thing’s kittens or something, and wished he had his gun with him.

There was a sudden blur of movement as something seemingly dropped out of the sky in front of Danny. He blinked rapidly until the blur resolved itself into the shape of a man – he was crouched low, his head bowed and arms out wide; he was shirtless and green tattoos swirled down from his shoulders. Despite skin smudged with dirt Danny could tell this wasn’t a native, though who or what he was wasn’t readily apparent. He wore a raggedy pair of green camouflage pants that had certainly seen better days, and his feet were bare. A large, sheathed knife was strapped to his leg.

“What are you doing?” Danny hissed, trying to get a bead on the jaguar. In response, the stranger reached back and tugged on his shirt. He stumbled down to one knee and found his head being pushed down towards his chest.

“Hey!” he protested, before he realized that the guy wanted him to stop looking at the big cat. Belatedly he recalled something about not looking them in the eye because it was perceived as threatening behavior, and so he stayed there half-kneeling and hoping for the best. Jungle Boy stayed between him and the jaguar until the animal finally decided to move along, and then he turned whip-fast on Danny, staring intently at him.

“So, okay. Thanks for the assist there.” Danny pushed himself back to his feet with considerably less fluid grace than the half-dressed man in front of him. “I don’t suppose you can direct me towards some people, preferably people with a phone?”

The guy didn’t respond at all, except to move cautiously forward. When Danny didn’t react, he started patting him all over with slender but dirty hands.

“Hey! Stop that!” Danny poked him in the shoulder.

The other guy jerked back, startled, and then shoved Danny hard in the chest; he landed painfully on his tailbone and cursed.

“What is _wrong_ with you? Is that standard jungle etiquette? Because that’s just another thing wrong with this damn place.” Danny grimaced. “I think you broke my ass.”

The man crouched down and moved forward once more, reaching out until he could touch Danny’s knee and then pulling back quickly while he watched with wide, grey-green eyes. This time Danny bit his lip to keep from spooking his new companion, and that only encouraged him to get even closer until he was right in Danny’s face.

“You don’t have a real good grasp on the concept of personal space, do you? No, I can see you don’t.” He kept his voice as low and non-threatening as possible because clearly this guy wasn’t all there. “Do you speak English? ¿Hablas inglés?”  
But the guy just kept prodding at Danny until he got annoyed and very slowly moved until he had the guy’s head between his hands. The stranger’s eyes widened in alarm but he made no move to pull away.

“I need you to focus here, Tarzan, can you do that? I need to get to a phone, or civilization, or both. Is any of this getting through?”

Danny stared and the man just stared back, looking somehow terrified but not like he was really grasping the point of the conversation. Figures he’d stumble on the one non-verbal guy in the whole rainforest. Danny dropped his gaze, noticing for the first time that while this guy wasn’t wearing a shirt he _was_ wearing something much more informative: dog tags.

Releasing his hold on the guy’s head, he reached out with one hand and held up the dog tags so he could read them before the guy could pull away. _McGarrett, Steven J_ , followed by his social security number and a USN designation; this guy was in the Navy. Danny took a closer look at his new-found friend, who was still watching him with wide eyes.

“How long have you been here?” he asked, not expecting a reply. If he was active Navy, it had been a while; his brown hair hung in sloppy waves over his forehead, a far cry from what Danny assumed was the typical military issue haircut, and his face was pretty scruffy. There was a thick, ugly scar running from just behind his ear and around the back of his skull, and that surely had to be the cause of his apparent mental impairment.

“Steven?” Danny reached out slowly and patted the other man on the chest. “Is that you? Steven McGarrett?”

Jungle Boy continued to watch him, though his brow furrowed a bit as if he was pondering the question. Danny felt like an idiot, but he really needed to be able to communicate with this guy. They both needed to find a way out of this jungle.

“You’re Steven. Can I call you Steve?” Danny pulled his hand back and patted himself on the chest. “I’m Danny. You Steve, me Danny. Jesus, what am I _doing_? I sound like a lunatic.”

He started to turn away, and then Steve reached out and tapped him on the chest with his fingers, smiling. Danny couldn’t help but return his smile, even as he wondered if the head injury had anything to do with Steve not talking. As if he needed another reason to feel bad for the guy.

“That’s right. I’m Danny. And I need to go home. Can you help me get home?” He spoke slowly, as if to a very young child. “Home?”

Steve cocked his head, as if considering, and then nodded sharply and just started walking away. Hope rose anew in Danny and he hobbled after the other man as fast as he could. He hated losing sight of the river, but surely the Jungle Man of Peru knew his way around. He wondered what had happened to Steven J. McGarrett that he ended up alone here, unable to speak and living like a native. How had he survived a head wound that, judging by the scar, had been incredibly nasty? Danny was sure answers wouldn’t be forthcoming from his silent friend.

It didn’t take long for him to begin falling behind. His body had been put through the wringer and he just didn’t have it in him to make it much further. Losing sight of the river had been bad enough, but he started to panic when he lost sight of Steve as well.

“Hey! Hey, Steve!” Danny shouted. There was no reply and he closed his eyes for a moment while he tried to catch his breath. He’d never wanted a bottle of water so badly in his life. When he opened his eyes again he stumbled back a step or two, startled. Steve, who apparently had some ninja Navy skills, had returned silently and was all up in his personal space again. He looked worried.

“Could you please not do that?” Danny ran a hand over his face, scraping off the sweat. “Look, I need to just…I can’t keep going right now, okay?”

He looked down to make sure he wasn’t going to be sitting on some sort of spiny jungle creature before sinking down and stretching his legs out; the ankle was throbbing worse than ever, and was painfully swollen inside his hiking boot. Steve shook his shaggy head, tapping himself on the chest and then pointing deeper into the jungle.

“I…can’t…walk,” Danny said slowly. He pointed to his ankle and made a face the he hoped expressed the concept of pain. Steve’s eyes narrowed and Danny half expected to see smoke coming out of his ears from thinking so hard. Then he nodded and before Danny even knew what was happening he’d been lifted up into a fireman’s carry.

“ _What_ …you…put me _down_ , you Neanderthal!” He smacked at Steve’s hip and received only a huffed breath in response. Just when he thought he’d reached the peak of humiliation he had to suffer in one day, now he was being carried around like a sack of potatoes. 

“I’m not a damn _damsel_ in _distress_! Animal!” Danny raved, pointless though it may be. “You can’t just go grabbing people and throwing them over your shoulder like a…like some…you just _can’t_! How long have you been out in the jungle, that you don’t know this? Is it some Navy thing? Because this is _not_ normal behavior. Are you even listening to me?”

It turned out that yelling at someone lost a lot of the entertainment value when that person failed to respond in any way, and so Danny forced himself to relax a bit and tried not to mind being bounced around so much. He took a moment to marvel at the strength Steve had to carry him like this and not even be out of breath; probably he was some kind of covert ops guy and this was all second nature for him.

Unbelievably, despite the awkward position and constant jostling, Danny drifted off. He woke disoriented and stiff as Steve slid him off his shoulders and on to the ground. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, and at first couldn’t make out what he was looking at. One thing was clear – his mute new friend hadn’t taken him to a village of any kind.

“What is that? Is that a plane?”

It certainly seemed to be, overgrown with vegetation though it was. Danny could make out one busted wing and the cockpit. To his unschooled eye it looked like some kind of cargo plane and he couldn’t even begin to speculate how long it had been here in the jungle. He was absolutely certain, however, that Steve had misinterpreted what he’d been asking.

“Hey. Steve. What is this?”

The other man crouched down, tapping himself in the chest and then pointing to the downed plane. Danny watched this little pantomime for a long minute before he finally got the message.

“Okay. Alright. You took me to _your_ home. And it’s very nice, don’t get me wrong, but I need to go to _my_ home. I need a _phone_.”

Steve frowned and it was obvious that he’d expected a different reaction. He moved off and around the side of the plane where Danny couldn’t see him. Danny considered his options, and laughed at himself for thinking he even had any. He couldn’t find his way back to the river on his own, especially with his ankle all messed up. But he couldn’t just hang out here either, not indefinitely anyway. Maybe just a day, he decided. Let the ankle rest enough that he could maybe walk on it tomorrow.

He looked up when he heard Steve coming back, amused to see the other man juggling an arm full of fruit. Danny didn’t recognize all of it, but he could pick out the palm fruit and papayas. The bounty was dropped at his feet and Steve crouched down, pulled out his knife, and started hacking into a palm fruit. Danny’s stomach grumbled in anticipation, even though he normally wasn’t one to try new foods; he was so hungry right now he didn’t care what the hell it was, so long as it was edible.

Steve handed him a chunk of the yellow-orange pulp and Danny stuffed it in his mouth, making appreciative noises at both the taste and the small amount of juice that ran down his parched throat. Thus encouraged, Steve cut the rest of the palm fruit up, handing it to Danny a piece at a time. Next came some very juicy purplish berries that tasted a bit like cherries. By the time he finished those he was feeling a whole lot better, and put his hand over Steve’s to stop him from slicing up a papaya.

“I’m good. Thank you. No more.”

Steve cocked his head to the side, considering, then nodded. He wiped the blade of the knife on his pants and then gathered up the remaining fruit and carried it off. Danny got to his feet, hissing at the pain in his ankle, and hobbled over to the plane. Around the side, where Steve had disappeared, was a gaping hole that must’ve been torn during the crash. He pulled himself up and in, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light inside.

His assessment of it being a cargo plane turned out to be correct. In fact, there were still some wooden crates strapped in near the door to the cockpit. The rest of the space was covered with creeping vines, what might once have been a parachute, and a small camouflage pack. What he didn’t see was Steve.

“Steve? Hey, Tarzan, where’d you go?” Danny poked his head back out the hole and there was Steve, very carefully carrying a dented tin cup with both hands. “Whatcha got there, buddy?”

Danny accepted the cup, which was filled to the brim with water. Oh, but he wanted to chug it down! He knew at some point he’d have to drink something, but the fear of getting some foreign bug was still too strong. Steve held his palm up, indicating that Danny should drink.

“I can’t. It’s not safe, this water.” How to explain microbes to Tarzan? “There’s…things that live in the water. It’ll make me sick.”

Danny tried to pantomime getting sick, which for some reason only made Steve huff out a breath that might have been a laugh. He pointed up at the sky, then wiggled his fingers in a downward motion.

“It’s rainwater?” Danny asked, repeating the movement. “Rain?”

Steve put his fingers on the bottom of the cup and pushed it up to Danny’s mouth in reply.

“Okay, okay. No need to get pushy, pal.” Closing his eyes and saying a quick prayer against intestinal parasites, Danny drank the water. It tasted as good as he thought it would, better even. “Is there more? More?”

Steve grinned and took possession of the cup, disappearing into the greenery and then coming back a minute later with another full cup. Danny downed that one a little more slowly, savoring it.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. He handed the cup back. Steve motioned for him to stay put and quickly ducked inside the plane. Seconds later he was back, taking hold of Danny’s hand and pulling him away, deeper into the jungle.

“Where are we going?”

Steve made a hand gesture that he couldn’t interpret, so he just sighed and hobbled along. He figured he owed his new friend for feeding him, and carrying him all the way here. They didn’t go very far, just to a stream of swiftly moving water, and Steve pushed Danny down so that he was sitting beside it.

“This better not be your water source, pal, not after all that wiggly rain stuff you laid on me.”

His only response was a toothy grin, and then Steve was fumbling with the laces on Danny’s boot.

“What’re you…okay, back off, you’re just making knots.” Danny swatted Steve’s hands away and undid the laces himself. Pulling his swollen ankle out of the boot was incredibly painful, but then there was a small amount of relief when it wasn’t being constricted anymore. Steve very carefully took hold of Danny’s leg by the calf and stuck his foot into the cool water of the stream.

Danny closed his eyes and leaned back on his hands, sighing at the feel of the water on his hot, swollen skin. He supposed this was as good as it got, in lieu of painkillers. He was going to have to revise his position on his companion’s mental capacity. Steve might be slow in some areas, but in others he was right on the money.

He was jolted out of his thoughts when the subject of his suppositions suddenly slipped behind him, his legs alongside Danny’s and his dirty bare feet in the stream. Steve wrapped his arms around Danny’s waist and rested his chin on Danny’s shoulder, sighing happily.

“Um…” He tensed up and sincerely hoped that Jungle Boy wasn’t looking for some jungle love here. But Steve didn’t do anything further, and Danny let himself relax just a little. Maybe the guy was just lonely, and he wondered again how long he’d been living out here like a wild man.

The exertion of the day caught up with him, and soon he was leaning back, his head resting against Steve’s so that little puffs of warm air blew against his ear. Danny thought maybe this was all just a dream, brought on by strange foreign food, and he’d wake up back at the hotel in Lima with Gabby; they’d laugh about his crazy subconscious and maybe do a little necking before falling back to sleep.

“Just a crazy dream,” Danny muttered. He fell asleep with Steve humming softly against his shoulder.

*o*o*o*

Dusk had fallen when Danny woke again; he could see the change in light through the hole in the side of the plane. Somehow he’d slept through Steve carrying him back to his ersatz home and settling him in a little nest made from some kind of leafy greenery, the parachute he’d seen earlier, a thick wool blanket, and the torn remains of a camouflage shirt.

Danny stretched, taking stock of himself. His ankle was feeling much better after the long, cool soak it had. It should really be wrapped, but he didn’t think he had much chance of finding a handy ace bandage out here. He was hungry, thirsty, and really need to relieve himself; the last would be easy enough to remedy once he got himself up and out. There was no sign of Steve, but he wasn’t worried.

He got gingerly to his feet, trying not to put too much pressure on the twisted ankle. He hopped his way to the hole and levered himself out into the jungle. Once he’d taken care of nature’s business he went back inside the plane, curious about the cargo. The old crates were far from sturdy and it wasn’t hard to pry the lid off the closest one.

“You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”

Scotch. Bottles and bottles of Scotch. Not any rot-gut stuff either, but top shelf Glen Livet. Danny pulled a bottle out, looking at it almost reverently. Lost in the middle of the damn Amazon and he could drown himself in the kind of alcohol he’d never be able to afford back home. Another crate contained imported Beluga caviar and yeah, no; Danny didn’t think he’d ever be _that_ hungry. Unlike the Scotch, he wasn’t sure what the shelf life for fish eggs was.

“What is this, some rich guy’s party plane?”

With the bad ankle limiting his movement, he was only able to reach one more crate and was fully prepared to uncover tins of patè or something like that. He wasn’t expecting a crate full of vinyl record albums. With an amused grin he sat on the caviar box and flipped through the selections. Lots of Big Band stuff – Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman – plus Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, Pat Boone, Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Welk and other 40s and 50s singers and bands. Danny felt like he’d uncovered a time capsule and wished he had a record player.

He became aware of noises from outside the plane, and put the records away. He grabbed a bottle of Scotch and did his hop-hobble back outside. Steve was there, starting a fire and skewering something on a stick; it looked vaguely bird-like and he chose not to think too hard about what it might have been, so long as it was edible.

“Hey, Steve. Look what I found!” Danny held the bottle aloft. Steve just looked at him. “You probably won’t appreciate this, but I’ve got some Scotch here that has to be at least ninety years old.”

He settled himself down next to the fire and twisted the cap off the bottle. He sniffed it appreciatively before tipping it back and taking a quick swallow. The whisky burned pleasantly down his throat and into his stomach. 

“Oh, yeah. That’s good.” Danny shook the bottle at Steve, offering him some, but the other man seemed less than impressed. He also sniffed at the bottle, then took the smallest possible sip at Danny’s insistence. He immediately started coughing, pulling the funniest face that Danny had ever seen. Clearly he was not a fan of finely-aged whisky.

“That’s okay, Tarzan. It’s an acquired taste.” He helped himself to another swallow, sighing happily. “I just might survive this jungle after all.”

Steve tapped him on the arm to get his attention, then pointed at the two medium-sized bird carcasses he had sitting over the fire. He mimed eating, bringing his hand to his mouth several times.

“Eat,” Danny translated. “Yes, that’s good. I could eat. Has to be better than caviar, right? Not as good as pizza, though. Or malasadas. Boy, could I go for a bag of those right now. Grease and all.”

Something about that seemed to sharpen Steve’s attention and he patted Danny on the chest.

“What? What did I say?”

He made the sign for eating again.

“What? Food? Pizza? Do you remember eating pizza?”

Steve looked frustrated, pulling his bottom lip in under his teeth. He shook his head.

“Malasadas?” Danny guessed. “Is that it?”

That was clearly the right answer, because Steve’s whole face lit up like a Christmas tree. Which meant…what? That he was familiar with that particular type of pastry? He wondered where else you could get malasadas besides Hawaii. And then Danny had a glimmer of an idea that seemed too incredible to be believed. There was no way. What were the odds? 

“Steve? Aloha.”

Another huge grin, and then Steve made the shaka sign with his hand. Danny just gaped at him. It was true.

“You’re _that_ Steven McGarrett?” Former HPD Detective John McGarrett’s son, missing and presumed dead during a classified SEAL mission. The older McGarrett was well-known to everyone on the force. He’d been a good cop once, but now he was a bitter man who drank too much and subscribed to some outlandish conspiracy theories. Danny tried to remember how long his son had been missing; he thought it was at least two years.

“This is unbelievable.” He took another shot from the whisky bottle. “I mean, really, this is stretching coincidence, don’t you think? Both of us from Hawaii ending up here in the jungle like two years apart? I knew I should’ve stayed in Jersey. Stuff like this _never_ happens in Jersey.”

Steve was still grinning like the Cheshire Cat. He crawled around the fire and hugged Danny, the much taller man wrapping around him like an octopus.

“Okay. Remember personal space? I need some of that back.” Danny pushed at Steve with his elbow, getting him to back up a foot or so. Unfortunately that took his happy grin away too, which made him feel a little guilty. He didn’t know how much Steve was able to process, but clearly he’d been thrilled to hear reminders from home. It wasn’t his fault he was so touchy-feely after living out in the jungle alone so long.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m just not used to all the hugging, okay?” He tried to remember the little bit of Hawaiian he’d picked up in the year he’d been living on the Islands. “Uh…kala mai.”

Steve studied him, then crept close enough to drop his head on Danny’s shoulder. Danny suppressed a sigh. What was he going to do with this guy? Without even thinking his hand came up and started to stroke Steve’s hair, soothing him like he would do Grace. He lost track of time, and he was fairly certain his silent friend had fallen asleep, when the scent of cooked poultry reached him from the fire.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty.” Danny patted Steve on the back of the head. “Time to eat.”

Steve went from zero to sixty instantaneously, checking on the cooked birds and zipping off for another cupful of water. It had turned full dark by that time, and Danny wasn’t ashamed to say that he was worried about the animals that might be out there hunting. Sure, Tarzan had his big knife, but a gun would’ve made him feel more secure.

Whatever kind of birds had been sacrificed for their dinner mattered very little to Danny. He ate his embarrassingly fast, noting as he did so that the meat was tender if a little pink. Steve ate far more slowly, clearly savoring every bite. When the last bit of meat had been eaten and the small bones tossed in the fire, he produced another palm fruit to share with Danny.

“Dessert, too? Very nice.” Danny accepted his half. “Mahalo.”

That earned him another blinding grin, and he couldn’t help but smile back. Steve McGarrett was an interesting mix of ability and innocence, his face sometimes completely blank and other times his eyes would telegraph incredible intelligence. He had such an open nature, too, not something Danny would’ve expected from a Navy SEAL.

Steve leaned over and tapped Danny on the chest, looking at him expectantly.

“What?”

Another tap, and then he tapped himself on the chest.

“Danny. And Steve.”

Steve nodded encouragingly, tapping Danny again.

“Danny.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together. A low rumbling came from his throat and Danny suddenly understood that his new friend was attempting to speak. He held his breath, leaning forward just a bit in anticipation. He wanted to offer encouragement, but didn’t want to say anything to distract the other man. In the end it turned out not to matter; Steve never got beyond some frustrated grunting.

“Hey, don’t worry about it, Steve. Honestly, it’s fine. We’re communicating pretty well, right?” Danny put a comforting hand on his arm. “Don’t push yourself. You don’t want to rush things.”

Steve looked incredibly crestfallen. He cleared up the remainder of the fruit and gestured to Danny to take care of any pressing business he had before the fire was put out. Danny did so, and hobble-hopped back into the plane while there was still a little bit of light to guide him. He stood by the little nest/bed that he’d woken up in earlier, waiting.

The fire was extinguished, and the darkness was absolute. Danny was conscious of every noise beyond the safety of the cargo plane, every sound somehow magnified and vaguely ominous. He was startled when Steve grabbed him by the elbow; among his other skills apparently he could see in the dark. He pulled them both down on top of the parachute and covered Danny carefully with the blanket. The make-shift, leafy mattress didn’t distract at all from the hard metal surface beneath them, and Danny spared a moment of longing for his bed back home.

He could feel Steve beside him, curled up into as tight a ball as his long limbs would allow. Is that how he always slept? It didn’t seem very comfortable. There was a snuffling sound in the dark that he couldn’t process immediately, but when he finally did he moved to cover Steve’s back, drawing the blanket over both of them. The other man shuddered, the only other outward sign that he was crying. 

“Shh, it’s okay Steve.” Feeling only slightly awkward, Danny put an arm around his companion’s waist and held on tight. “Please don’t cry. Men aren’t supposed to cry, it undermines our inherent masculinity. Well, under certain circumstances it’s allowable, I guess. I cried when Grace was born. I may have shed a tear or two when the Yankees won the ’96 World Series. And if you tell anyone this I’ll deny it with my dying breath, but some movies have been known to make me cry.”

He was glad to notice that his running monologue seemed to have done the trick; Steve had stopped crying and wasn’t so tightly curled up. Danny yawned. Even though he’d had a nap in the middle of the day, he was exhausted.

“Get some sleep, Tarzan. Tomorrow we need to start looking for civilization. I’m gonna treat you to a great big bag of malasadas when we get back to Hawaii, okay?”

There was no response from Steve, who had already fallen asleep. Despite the uncomfortable bed and the unconventional sleeping arrangements, Danny wasn’t far behind. As he drifted off with another man in his arms, he had the fleeting realization that he’d barely given Gabby a thought since Steve literally dropped into his life.

*o*o*o*

Gabby was in the forefront of Danny’s mind when he woke early the next morning. He felt vaguely guilty, even though Steve was already up and out doing whatever wild jungle men did first thing in the morning; probably marking his territory. He knew she was probably frantic with worry for him, and he’d barely spared her a thought the day before. She’d probably already organized an extensive search and rescue; Gabby was a take-charge kind of woman.

Truth was, he’d been thinking a lot about her, and about the two of them as a couple, over the last month or so. They had a lot of fun together, and he loved her, he really did, but he was starting to think he maybe didn’t love her _enough_ ; maybe it was more just a case of him not wanting to be alone anymore, and that was not a good basis for a relationship. When she’d suggested this trip, he’d seen it as an opportunity to decide how he really felt once and for all. Of course, he hadn’t counted on getting lost. Then again, maybe that was the sign he’d been waiting for.

Danny rolled onto his back and threw his arm over his face. Bad ankle or no, he and Steve needed to find a way out of this jungle. He wanted to get back to Grace, and the desire to return John McGarrett’s prodigal son to Hawaii was becoming a stronger impulse all the time.

He heard Steve come in, despite the man’s propensity for ninja stealth, but didn’t move his arm. He was trying to think of a way to convey the idea of civilization and other people. Surely Steve knew where they could find a native settlement at the very least; there was no way he’d survived on his own after his head injury.

“Da-neeee.”

That snapped him right out of his reverie. Danny flung his arm to the side and looked up at Steve, mouth hanging open.

“What did you say?”

Steve grinned and poked him in the chest. “Da-neeee.”

Danny sat up, grinning right back at him. “See, I knew you could do it! Didn’t I say you could do it?” There was no reason for him to feel so proud of his new friend’s accomplishment, but that didn’t stop him from feeling it. He didn’t even complain when he found himself pulled into a big bear hug, slapping Steve enthusiastically on the back.

“As one word vocabularies go, you picked an excellent one,” he said, moving back to put some space between them again.

Still grinning, Steve reached around and grabbed the small pack Danny had noticed the day before. From its depths he produced a toothbrush that had definitely seen better days, and a tube of toothpaste that was squeezed flat. He offered both to Danny, who reluctantly accepted them.

“I’d just like to go on the record here as saying that I don’t normally share personal hygiene products. That’s…fairly nasty, actually. But since these are special circumstances…thanks. I mean, mahalo.”

Steve patted Danny on the head, bringing to his attention the fact that what he really needed was a shower; he didn’t want to contemplate what his hair must look like right now. He followed Steve out to the stream, his ankle a bit less painful. He was made to sit on the ground and soak his foot again while his new friend went off to procure another cup of water. He quickly brushed his teeth, not giving too much thought to the provenance of the toothbrush; there wasn’t any toothpaste left in the tube.

“Oh, hell no.” Danny stared up at Steve when he came back. He was holding the cup full of water in both hands, and had a monkey sitting on his shoulder, tail curled around his neck. It looked like the kind of monkey from the movie Outbreak, which didn’t ease his mind at all.

“Don’t you think you’re carrying this Tarzan thing a little too far?”

Steve sat beside him, careful not to spill the water, and handed him the cup. Danny took it, keeping a wary eye on the monkey. His new friend dangled his feet in the stream and pet the primate on his shoulder.

“Da-neeee.”

“Steve.”

“Da-neeee,” he said again, and patted the ground. There was a very serious look in his grey-green eyes and Danny struggled to understand what it was he was trying to express.

“Danny, that’s right.”

More patting of the ground, and he tried not to be distracted by the monkey, which was picking idly at Steve’s hair.

“The ground? Here. We’re here?”

Steve grunted, clearly frustrated. He wrapped his arms around Danny and clung tightly to him, dislodging the monkey which chattered in irritation before shooting up the nearest tree. Danny patted him on the forearm, the only place he could reach with his own arms pinned to his sides.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I just don’t know what you want.” He was reminded of Grace before she started talking; there were many times that his interactions with her ended in her frustrated tears because he didn’t understand what she’d been trying to convey. 

“Da-neeee,” Steve sighed.

“I know, buddy. You’ll get there. But listen, while I have your undivided attention I need to talk to you about something.” Danny squirmed in Steve’s arms, trying to get a bit more comfortable, but the hold on him only tightened further and he gave it up for the moment. “We need to find some people, Steve. I need to go home. _My_ home. We can’t stay…”

Steve immediately released him and nodded emphatically, back to slapping his hand on the ground. For good measure he also patted Danny on the chest. And suddenly he understood.

“You want me to stay?”

Danny was rewarded with a bright smile, the one that made Steve look like a young boy. He felt unexpectedly pleased that the other man wanted him to stay there in the jungle, but knew he’d have to disappoint him. There was no question of not returning to Hawaii, to Grace. And Gabby, he added belatedly. He put his hand on Steve’s bare chest, fingers splayed.

“Mahalo, Steve. But we can’t stay here. You and me, we have to go home. To Hawaii. You remember Hawaii?”

Steve’s smile dimmed and he tipped his head to the side, brow furrowed as he tried to understand what he was being asked.

“Remember we talked about malasadas yesterday? When we get home we can have those. We can go to the beach. Your dad…he says you like to swim and surf. Do you remember your dad? Uh…makua?”

Steve sucked on his bottom lip, and gave Danny a lopsided shrug. He wasn’t sure quite how to interpret that.

“Steve and Danny have to go home. You and me. Do you want to come home with me, Steve?”

Something there seemed to click, and Danny was rewarded with a tentative nod. Then he had a lap full of Navy SEAL, Steve clinging to him like barnacle. Danny rubbed his back, chuckling.

“I’ll take that as a yes. You’ve been out here a long time, Steve, I know you know where we can go. And we’ll stick together, right? Me and Tarzan, fighting our way out of the jungle. Although I guess that would make me Jane, so maybe not.”

He kept absently rubbing Steve’s back while he thought of everything they’d have to do to get back home. Finding civilization was only the first step. He’d lost his identification, including his passport, and he was pretty sure Steve didn’t have his either. So who then to call? There was the Navy to consider as well. They’d somehow lost Steve during a mission, and would likely want to debrief him before they’d let him go anywhere. Not that they’d get much out of him.

Danny was jostled out of his thoughts when Steve pulled back and mimed eating, watching him expectantly. He nodded and made the same motions back to him, rubbing his stomach for good measure. Steve flashed him a grin and went bounding off, hopefully for some fruit; Danny wasn’t sure he was up to eating anything too exotic first thing in the morning.

Breakfast turned out to be barbequed snake and papayas, not something Danny ever envisioned that he’d be eating. He had no idea what kind of snake it was, not that Steve could tell him anyway, and chose not to think about it at all. _Just imagine bacon_ , he told himself. He ate fast, impatient to get the show on the road and leave the damned jungle behind him, but of course Steve seemed extra slow; probably he was afraid to leave, and Danny couldn’t blame him for that.

“It’s okay, Steve,” he said, putting a hand on the other man’s arm. “We’ll stick together, right? Danny and Steve?”

Steve gave him a tentative smile. “Danny.”

“That’s right. You’re really getting the hang of that.” Danny made himself eat until he was full, refusing to acknowledge that the snake actually hadn’t tasted all that bad. When Steve had finished as well he disappeared inside the plane and came out moments later with the tattered remains of his shirt, and the pack which Danny immediately snatched so he could look through it. Inside was the toothbrush and empty toothpaste tube, a rusted razor, an almost full bottle of aspirin, the wool blanket and tin cup, and a Glock that was all out of ammo.

“Not sure how much help that’s gonna be,” Danny muttered, but when he tried to take it out of the pack Steve shoved it back in with a frown. “Okay, okay. We’ll take it. Jeez, don’t get your jungle panties in a bunch.”

Steve set about tearing the shirt into strips, and then wrapped them tightly around Danny’s swollen ankle, keeping all the knots in front so he could still get his boot on, if not properly laced. Danny supposed he shouldn’t be surprised by that; he’d probably learned battlefield triage in the Navy.

“Okay, give me a hand up,” Danny said, holding his arm up. Steve pulled him until he was standing, and he tried to keep the minimum amount of pressure on his ankle. “This is gonna be slow going.”

“Danny,” Steve said, patting him on the chest.

“What’s up?”

Steve slipped on the pack, patted him again and then went off into the jungle. Danny assumed he was meant to stay put, so he did. In his head he was plotting out explanations to make when they found people. He was particularly concerned with how to explain Steve to Gabby; would she understand all his touchy-feeliness? He was surprised at the protective feeling that welled up inside him at the thought of anyone doing anything to hurt Steve. That would simply not be acceptable, not even from Gabby.

Of course, all that took a backseat when Steve came back, carrying a long piece of wood in one hand and what looked suspiciously like a camelbak water carrier in the other.

“You big jerk, did you have that all this time?” Danny grabbed it out of his hands, felt the weight of it that indicated it was full. “Why the hell did you carry around that little cup when you had a whole bag?”

Steve’s eyes widened and he took a step back, and Danny mentally slapped himself. It wasn’t like the guy was purposely holding out on him, he was likely just holding on to it for longer excursions or something. He held his hand out in a placating gesture. 

“I’m sorry. Kala mai. I’m not mad at you, okay? You just surprised me.”

Steve didn’t look convinced and Danny sighed. Sometimes it was easy to forget that his new friend didn’t operate with a full deck all the time, and allowances needed to be made.

“Danny is sorry,” he said and tried to make sure he had an appropriately contrite expression on his face. “Very, very sorry.”

He was submitted to a lengthy stare, and then Steve grinned. He moved right into Danny’s personal space as usual, but instead of the clingy hug that Danny had come to expect he got a wet kiss on his forehead instead. He tried not to let on how weird that made him feel, and tried even harder not to think about any of the ways in which it actually _wasn’t_ weird at all. Steve handed him the wood and he saw now that it was a thick branch that had been fashioned into a walking stick.

“Did you do this for me?” he asked, absurdly touched that Steve had gone to the trouble to make the hike a little easier on him. “Mahalo.”

Steve nodded excitedly, narrowed his eyes a bit, and then added a new word to his tiny speaking vocabulary. “Ma-halo.”

Danny couldn’t help returning his grin, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, Chatty Cathy. Let’s get out of here.”

*o*o*o*

As Danny had suspected, the going was slow. Even with the walking stick he had to stop regularly to rest and catch his breath. The humidity was so thick he could practically chew the air, and his shirt was saturated with sweat and sticking to him in a very uncomfortable way. He kept envisioning a nice, hot shower. None of that seemed to bother Steve, who was acclimated to the environment.

Danny thought that Steve would get impatient with the pace, but he didn’t seem to mind. Occasionally he’d go loping off to scout up ahead, but he always came back and walked beside Danny, looking him over each time to make sure he was okay. If he didn’t like what he saw he insisted that they sit for a few minutes and he’d push the water on Danny, who had the camelbak slung over his shoulder.

“You too,” Danny insisted after Steve kept turning down his chance for a drink. “Don’t make me use force on you, Tarzan, just drink some water.”

Steve sighed but did as he was instructed, and Danny watched closely to be sure he actually drank and didn’t just fake it; he’d been a father too long to be susceptible to stuff like that.

“I can’t wait to see what Grace makes of you,” he remarked, flexing his ankle just a little and wincing as he did so. “I didn’t tell you about her. She’s my daughter. Nine years old and smart as a whip. She’s a great kid.”

Steve cocked his head as he listened, making that face again that Danny had decided to call Deep Thoughts. He took Danny’s left hand in his and examined his fingers, poking at them lightly as he did so. “Danny?”

“I’m not married. Divorced, actually. Rachel, that’s my ex-wife, she remarried and moved to Hawaii. That’s why I’m there, so I can be close to Grace.”

“Danny,” Steve said, and gave him such a soft, affectionate look that Danny actually felt himself blushing.

“Come on, you big goof.” He used the walking stick to lever himself up, and Steve kept hold of his hand until he had his balance. Which was ironic, because there was something about Steve that kept throwing him off balance, psychologically speaking. It was going to be a long day.

*o*o*o*

It was late afternoon and Danny was exhausted. At some point during the hike through the jungle he’d abandoned the walking stick and used Steve instead, the other man lending his strength to help Danny stay upright and moving. They’d found a trail a couple hours ago, which had made the going a bit easier all around. And then he saw a young boy watching them curiously a few feet ahead.

“Hey. Hey! Steve, look.”

But of course he’d already seen, and stopped walking. He held his hands out, trying to look non-threatening Danny supposed, and the boy’s eyes widened.

“Takana blanco!” 

Danny only had a minimal knowledge of Spanish, enough to know that _blanco_ meant white. He wasn’t sure about the other word, but he hadn’t thought the kid’s eyes could get any wider until he took a few hesitant steps forward and got a better look at Danny’s face.

“Da-nay!”

“Okay. That’s weird.” And really, Danny’d had his fill of weird for a while. It was likely a coincidence, anyway. Surely there were plenty of Spanish words that sounded like his name but meant something completely different, like avocado or something. Before he could ask for help, the boy had turned tail and run, disappearing.

Danny and Steve looked at each other, and Danny just shrugged. “We should just keep heading this way, I guess.”

They continued forward slowly. The bad ankle wasn’t taking kindly to all the walking, but there was nothing to do but keep on pushing because stopping wouldn’t get them assistance. Danny could tell his companion was concerned, judging by the frequent furrowed-brow glances and the tight grip around his waist.

“It’s okay, Steve. That kid has to live somewhere, right? So, we’ll find his village or whatever and then we can rest.” The idea of sitting and taking off his boot was glorious. “Then we can get a message out, even if it’s by jungle drums. I don’t much care at this point.”

Danny hoped the village was close because he didn’t have much left in him. The more he limped, the more his hip hurt from the awkward gait. It was starting to move up into his back now, too, and wasn’t that just great? He was pretty sure once he sat down he wasn’t getting back up again. Ever.

“Danny.” Steve’s vocabulary was small, but he could fit a lot into one word and right now he sounded worried.

“No, no stopping now. You’ll never get me up again, I promise you.” Danny closed his eyes briefly as they trudged onward; he was so tired he thought he could fall asleep mid-stride.

“Da-nay!”

His eyes popped open to find that they’d somehow drawn a crowd of children, ten at least, all of them grinning as they came forward and touched him. Steve stiffened up next to him, making a sound between a grunt and a growl, and Danny patted him on the back.

“Stand down, Magilla Gorilla. It’s okay.” Danny reached out and reeled in the oldest looking child. “¿Nos puedes ayudar?”

“Nuestro pueblo está cerca,” was the cheery reply.

“Okay,” Danny said for Steve’s benefit. “We must not be too far from their village. Their home.”

Steve just stared at him, clearly confused.

“It’s Spanish. They speak Spanish. Well, and so do I. Just a little, though. Enough to get by, obviously.” He knew he was babbling, but the thought of finally getting off his ankle, which was shooting pain up his leg, was making him dizzy with relief. Steve shrugged and then glared at the children, who promptly scattered with childish screams and wide grins.

“Such a charmer,” Danny chuckled.

The village was only another five minutes of hobbling away, and he’d never been happier to see rustic huts and campfires in his life. The adults were just as welcoming as the children and soon had Danny reclining on a woven mat on the floor of one of their homes. He was plied with water and fish, and tried not to bite through his lip when Steve eased the boot off his injured foot.

An older woman with sleek dark hair and equally dark eyes squatted down in front of him and clucked her tongue at how swollen and discolored the ankle was. “We send for doctor.”

“You speak English?” Danny was relieved. His Spanish wasn’t going to hold out forever. “Are we talking a doctor-doctor, or some kind of witch doctor? Because honestly, at this point I’ll take either one.”

“American doctor,” the woman qualified with a smile. “Next village. He come soon.”

Steve hovered at Danny’s side, his expression distrustful. The woman nodded at him. “Takana blanco. You are well.”

“You know him?”

“Sí. He comes, much sick. We heal him.” She offered Steve some food as well but he just shook his head. “He not come back much long time.”

“Thank you,” Danny said in all sincerity. “Thank you for helping him.”

The woman smiled, then turned towards the door where the children were all gathered, trying to see in. “Buscar la bolsa.”

There was some shuffling and murmuring in the doorway, and then Danny’s mouth gaped open when his backpack was handed through and dropped in his lap. It was battered and torn in some places, but mostly intact. Steve eyed it with interest.

“We know you, from picture.” The woman tapped the front pocket of the bag, where Danny kept his passport. “Da-nay Weelums.”

“This is unbelievable.” He opened the bag up and rooted around inside. His cell phone had been protected from his unexpected swim thanks to the ziploc bag it was sealed in, but there was no cell service available when he turned it on. Steve was eyeing it with interest, so Danny passed it over his shoulder to him and kept digging. He pulled out a couple Hershey bars, also sealed in plastic – thank God Gabby had been so insistent on that! – and handed them to the woman.

“For the kids,” he said. “It’s chocolate.”

It almost started a riot, but did send the children off as they pushed and shoved for a piece. Danny set the bag aside and rubbed his face wearily. He wished he’d been carrying the first aid kit instead of Gabby, because he really could have used an aspirin right about now. Whoever this American doctor was, he needed to pick up the pace.

“Danny?” Steve held the phone out to him. Somehow he’d managed to access the photo files and pull up a picture of Grace. Danny grinned.

“That’s my daughter. Remember we talked about her? Grace?”

“Danny’s,” was the hesitant reply. 

“That’s right. Grace is Danny’s. I’m her dad.”

Steve patted himself on the chest. “Danny’s?”

Danny couldn’t help the fond grin that spread across his face. “Danny’s,” he confirmed, nodding. There was a lump in his throat.

He’d expected one of Steve’s big grins, but instead the man just buried his face in Danny’s shoulder, huddling close to him.

“He is long time alone,” the woman said. She’d taken a seat on a nearby stool. 

“He’s not alone anymore,” Danny said, one hand rubbing soothingly up and down Steve’s back. “I’ll make sure of that.”

A rousing cry of _el doctor_ heralded the arrival of the American doctor, who greeted all the children before ducking into the hut. He was tall and dressed casually in khaki slacks and a loose-fitting white shirt. He greeted the woman first, a smile on his mustachioed face.

“Tehya. Imaynan kashianki?”

“Allillanmi.” They weren’t speaking Spanish, probably some kind of local offshoot dialect, so Danny couldn’t really follow along until they switched to English. “Doctor Fletcher. He need help.”

“So I see.” The man hunkered down, setting aside his green canvas medical bag and offering his hand to Danny. “I’m Doctor Fletcher, Doctors Without Borders. You wouldn’t happen to be Daniel Williams by chance, would you?”

Danny shook his hand. “I had no idea I was so well known in the backwaters of Peru.”

Fletcher laughed. “We received a call at the clinic, asking us to keep an eye out for a lost American. I sure hope that’s you.”

“It is. Flash flood carried me away.”

“Well, it’s lucky you found your way here. Lots of jungle out there to get lost in.” He cast a curious glance at Steve, who was still scrunched up behind Danny. “Is your friend also in need of medical assistance?”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do for him, doc.”

“Takana blanco,” the woman supplied. The doctor’s eyes widened.

“This is the “white hammer” I’ve heard so much about? I’m glad you sent for me, Tehya! Gretchen will never believe this.” Fletcher opened up his bag and pulled out a satellite phone, quickly dialing. “Gretchen, it’s Doug. Listen, call Lima and tell them we found their wandering tourist. No, I’m not kidding. You’ll never guess who else is here, either. No. The Hammer. Yes, really! Well, I don’t know if I can convince him but I’ll do my best. Half hour, tops. Okay.”

The doctor tucked the phone back in the bag and finally turned his attention to Danny’s battered ankle. Danny sucked in a sharp breath as it was poked and prodded, which made Steve pop his head up, glowering and growling; this didn’t seem to phase the good doctor.

“I wish you hadn’t walked on this, Mr. Williams. I’m worried you’ve done damage to the ligaments.”

“Didn’t have much of a choice,” Danny said, wincing. “Couldn’t stay where I was.”

“Mmm hmm. Well, I can put an air splint on it for now, and give you something for the pain. I have a Jeep, so I can take you back to the clinic with me and take a closer look at it there.”

“Sounds good to me.”

The air splint ended up being a kind of clear inflatable boot, which was secured around his foot with a minimal of jostling and jaw clenching. Finally, there was some pain relief in the form of a hydrocodone tablet, which Danny gratefully swallowed.

“You should start feeling the effects of that soon,” Fletcher promised. He turned his attentions to Steve, who was still glowering at him. “Your friend, he’s the one they talk about. They say he broke his head.”

“He did something for sure. Big scar. He doesn’t talk much, and sometimes he doesn’t seem to understand things, but for the most part he’s getting by pretty well. Saved my life.” Danny reached back and patted him on the cheek, which earned him a scowl.

“I don’t think he likes me,” Fletcher observed.

“He’s just a little over-protective, doc, don’t take it personally.”

“It’s a shame no-one was at the clinic when he stumbled into the village. We don’t have funding for a year-round presence, unfortunately, or we could’ve offered him a better level of care. The fact that he’s this functional is amazing. I assume he’ll be coming with us?”

“Danny’s,” Steve warned.

Fletcher held up his hands. “Fine by me, honestly.”

“Be nice to the doctor,” Danny said. “He’s hooking me up with good drugs.”

The doctor got to his feet and collected his bag. “Tehya. Thank you.”

“You take to clinic?” she asked, standing as well. 

“We’ll fix him up and send him home. Huq p'unchaukama.”

“Huq p'unchaukama.”

“Gracias,” Danny offered. Tehya smiled at him.

“You very welcome.”

Steve slung the backpack and his own bag over one shoulder before helping Danny up, reluctantly allowing Fletcher to get on Danny’s other side to support him so he wouldn’t have to use the injured ankle at all. Getting into the Jeep wasn’t much of a problem, but Steve seemed reluctant to do the same, staring at it distrustfully.

“It’s okay, Tarzan. It’s just a Jeep, it won’t hurt you.” Danny had a moment of sudden fear. What if this was as far as Steve was willing to go? He’d been living out in the jungle so long, maybe he wasn’t ready to leave it for the unknown.

“Steve?” he asked in a softer tone of voice. “Are you coming with Danny?”

Steve sucked on his bottom lip for a minute, then shrugged and gave him a tremulous smile. “Danny’s.”

The relief was overwhelming. Funny how quickly he’d gotten used to having Steve around. He helped his friend get situated in the back and couldn’t help laughing at the surprised expression on his face when the engine started. Steve held Danny’s hand tightly during the ten minute drive, though towards the end he had his face tilted up to the sky, grinning hugely.

“Just as I suspected,” he sighed. “You’re some kind of adrenalin junkie, aren’t you? I bet you have a motorcycle or your own plane or something. Am I right?”

Steve just kept grinning.

*o*o*o*

Gretchen turned out to be a fifty year old pediatrician and the new love of Danny’s life. With her assistance he’d been able to bathe and, more importantly, wash his hair, until he finally felt a little more human. He’d been put on a milder painkiller and his less-swollen ankle was tightly ensconced in a gel splint. Steve was reluctantly clean as well, having endured a quick shower, and had been examined by Doctor Fletcher; he recommended that Steve see a neurologist once he got back home, and shook his head sadly at the big scar.

Danny was having a lively conversation with Gretchen about the many joys of Italian cooking when Gabby arrived with the cavalry. The clinic was suddenly full of men in uniforms that turned out to be the local constabulary, and Gabby’s strident voice drowning them all out.

“Oh, Danny! Thank God!” She pressed a kiss to his forehead and clutched his hand in hers. Steve, who was perched on the neighboring bed wearing a borrowed t-shirt with his tattered pants, immediately stiffened up and frowned.

“So I hear you’ve been looking for me,” Danny said, feeling just a little bit dopey from the medication.

“I thought you drowned, or broke your neck.” She looked exhausted, her skin red with sunburn and bags under her eyes. She looked wonderful to Danny, who was thrilled just to see a familiar face.

“Just took a side trip.” He grinned up at her, and then grimaced when his other hand was crushed in a steely grip. Steve had moved off the bed and was standing in a clearly defensive posture, one hand in Danny’s and the other hand hovering over the hilt of his knife.

“And who is this?” Gabby and Steve shared a mutual glare over Danny, and he shook his head to try and clear it. He’d been worried about this, and rightfully so it seemed.

“Gabby, this is Steve McGarrett.” He tugged Steve closer and gave him a quelling look. “He’s been stranded out here and I was lucky enough to stumble across him. He saved my life.”

“Well, of course I’m grateful to you for that.” Gabby smiled, the one reserved for distasteful people she was forced to be nice to; he’d seen it often enough at museum events. Her eyes kept drifting down to where Steve was holding his hand, but he wasn’t about to apologize for that. Steve needed reassurance.

“Danny.”

“It’s okay, Steve.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Gabby asked in a hushed tone. “Is he…brain damaged or something?”

Danny bristled at that, pulling his hand out of hers. “He’d not brain damaged! He had a traumatic experience, okay? He’s been living like Tarzan in the jungle for like two years, all alone. Some Navy mission gone wrong, I’m guessing. I’d still be wandering around out there without his help, or else I’d be jaguar chow. I promised I’d get him home and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“He’s Navy?”

“Yes, Gabby, he’s Navy. A SEAL, actually.” His voice absolutely was not tinged with pride. “Probably some kind of national hero or something, and we’re taking him back to Hawaii with us.”

“Fine. Let me make some calls and then we can head back to Lima.” Gabby stalked away and Danny watched her go with a sigh. He didn’t understand why she was being so difficult. But then Steve was crowding up on the bed next to him, making little noises in the back of his throat, and Danny scooted over to accommodate him.

“I know this doesn’t make much sense to you, does it?” He rubbed Steve’s back as the bigger man curled up against him, one hand clutching tightly to Danny’s shirt. “It’s okay. Gabby will come around, she just needs to get to know you. You’re a good guy, Tarzan. Don’t forget that, okay?”

“Ma-halo,” Steve murmured against Danny’s shoulders.

*o*o*o*

Doctor Fletcher had given Steve a mild sedative to help make the trip to Lima easier on him, for which Danny was immensely grateful. It was certainly culture shock to go from a solitary existence living out of a cargo plane to suddenly being in a city surrounded by billions of people. Not to mention cars, electricity, noise, and food. As per the doctor’s orders, Danny made sure that Steve didn’t eat anything spicy or heavy until his digestive system became better acclimated to regular food.

Gabby had upgraded their room at the Westin to a suite, though clearly she hadn’t anticipated that Steve would be with them; she wanted to get him his own room, but Danny had immediately vetoed that and insisted Steve could sleep on the pull-out sofa. She hadn’t been thrilled, but acquiesced and also agreed to having room service instead of going down to the restaurant.  
“I’m not in any mood for a sit down dinner,” Danny had patiently explained. “And neither is Steve. Can we please just have a quiet night?”

The following day he intended on paying a visit to the American consulate office to see what could be done to get Steve out of the country. He sure wasn’t leaving without him. So he called for food and supervised Steve through a salad and a piece of plain, grilled tuna. Steve watched him the whole time, as if seeking assurance that everything he was doing was okay.

“Can’t he at least use a fork?” Gabby complained.

Danny bit his lip to keep from saying anything he’d regret, chalking Gabby’s attitude up to worry for him and sleepless nights. He really did appreciate everything she’d done to find him and so he was willing to cut her a little slack.

“Not a priority right now,” he said, urging Steve to try a tomato.

By the time dinner was over Danny was more than ready to call it a night, and Steve was visibly wilting. He perked up a bit when Danny presented him with a new toothbrush and a fresh tube of toothpaste, and brushed his teeth for a good ten minutes.

“Okay, pal. Let’s get you set up.” Danny opened up the sofa bed and grabbed two pillows from the closet. “This is where you’re going to sleep, okay? Nice and comfy, a damn sight better than that metal floor. Right?”

Steve didn’t look convinced but he lay down as instructed after pulling off his t-shirt, bouncing a little to test the thin mattress. He moved over, making room for Danny. Danny looked guiltily towards the big king sized bed that Gabby was currently sliding into.

“Danny is sleeping in the other bed, Steve. With Gabby. But I’ll be right there if you need anything, okay?”

Steve stared at him, trying to understand. Danny sat on the edge of the bed. “Gabby and I…we’re engaged. That means we’re going to get married. Do you remember about being married?”

Steve poked at his ring finger, looking miserable.

“That’s right.” There was more he wanted to say, but not with Gabby in the next room. And he wasn’t sure he could really explain himself to Steve anyway. His feelings for his fiancée had been changing for some time now, and the way she’d been acting towards Steve wasn’t making him feel any better about the way their relationship was going. This certainly wasn’t the time to get into any of that, not even with himself.

“Get some sleep, okay?” Danny gave Steve’s shoulder a squeeze and then went to join Gabby, stripping down to his boxer briefs when he got to the bed. He felt unaccountably shy about sharing a bed with her, though they’d been doing so for quite some time now. It was amazing how quickly things could change.

“You treat him like a little boy.”

“He just needs time to acclimate.” Danny lay down with a happy sigh. A real mattress, real pillows…heaven. So why was he suddenly so nostalgic for a cold, hard cargo plane?

“Well, I don’t like it.”

“Gabby.” Danny turned on his side and propped up on one elbow. “I’m so incredibly tired, you have no idea. Can we just sleep and talk about this tomorrow?”

“Fine.” She turned away from him and turned off the light.

Danny shook his head. Yes, it was definitely past time to talk to Gabby. He lay on his back, staring up into the dark, and turned his thoughts to the next steps he’d have to take with Steve. Hopefully the consulate would help get him out of the country, despite the fact that he didn’t have a passport. Would the dog tags be enough? Surely they could contact the Navy to verify his status as an American citizen. He really had no clear idea how that would work, though. He wanted to get the hell out of Peru, for sure, but not without Steve.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, thinking and unable to fall asleep, but it seemed like at least an hour. Gabby was breathing deep and regular beside him, but Steve wasn’t sleeping quite so easily. He’d started whimpering and thrashing around a bit, and Danny was limping over to the sofa bed as soon as he heard it.

“Steve? Hey, it’s okay. I’m here. Danny’s here.” He crawled on the bed, one hand reaching out to rub Steve’s arm. “It’s okay, Steve. Just a bad dream. I know you probably have plenty of nightmare fodder in that thick skull of yours, but it’s all over now. Okay?”

He kept his voice low and as soothing as possible. Soon enough the thrashing stopped and Steve turned towards him, wrapping him in that octopus hug he was so good at. Danny wasn’t sure he was even awake, especially given how quickly he calmed down and his breathing evened back out. The exhaustion of the day finally got to him, too, and he let himself relax. Before he knew it he was asleep too.

*o*o*o*

A loud pounding on the door woke Danny with a jolt. Steve was already up and crouched on the floor, knife out. Gabby hurried by, belting her robe and hissing at Danny to take the knife away.

“What the hell?” He dragged the sheet off the sofa bed and wrapped it around his waist. “Gabby?”

His breath caught in his throat when she backed away from the door to let two men in camouflage uniforms into the room. He shot a look at Steve, whose eyes had widened. He snapped to attention instantly, knife dropping to the floor with a dull thud.

“They’re military police,” Gabby explained, looking pleased with herself. “They’ve come to collect Steve.”

“ _What_?”

“We’ve come to escort Lt. Commander McGarrett back to the US for debriefing,” one of the MPs said. The patch on his chest said Ellard.

“You…you can’t just _take_ him like that!” Danny protested. “He won’t be able to talk to you.”

“We’ve been briefed on his medical condition, Sir,” the other MP, Salazar, said. “Commander McGarrett is active Navy and as such he needs to come in.”

“Well, fine. That’s just fine. But I’m going with him.”

“Danny, be reasonable!” Gabby snapped. “He’s Navy, let him go with them.”

“You cannot accompany the Commander, Sir.”

Danny fumed. Though still ramrod straight, Steve was looking nervously between him and the MPs. He should’ve known the military would get involved and be all ham-fisted about it. He had no doubt who had contacted them.

“Danny?” Steve looked like he wanted to move, but apparently the military training was ingrained on a genetic level. Danny went to him instead, standing beside him with a proprietary hand on his arm.

“Steve needs to stay with me. He doesn’t…understand things sometimes. I can help you.”

Ellard shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sir, but the Commander’s work is classified. We’ve notified his next of kin, I suggest you contact them.”

“St-stay Danny’s?” Steve asked, panic in his eyes.

Danny felt like he couldn’t catch his breath. They were going to just take Steve and leave, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. All he could was try and make it easier for Steve. 

“These are your people, Steve. You need to go with them.” 

Steve shook his head.

“Look at me, Steve. Come on, now, don’t be stubborn. They’ll take care of you and I’ll see you soon. I promise.” He gave Steve a one-armed hug, his friend rigid with tension. “Can you get your things?”

Steve didn’t look happy, but he did as Danny asked. He gathered up his bag, adding the new toothbrush to it, and pulled on his t-shirt. He came back to stand beside Danny, looking down at his feet.

“Where are you taking him?” 

“That’s classified.”

“Of course it is. Well, be assured that I will be making phone calls. You’d better take care of him, because if you don’t I don’t care what branch of military you are, I will make your lives miserable.”

“Noted, Sir,” Salazar said with the slightest hint of a grin.

“Danny’s,” Steve said petulantly.

“Hey. Not just Danny’s.” Danny patted himself on the chest. “Steve’s.”

That got his friend to look up, a hopeful look in his eyes. He patted Danny on the chest and nodded.

“Let’s go, Commander,” Ellard said. They escorted Steve out of the room and Danny couldn’t help following them out, watching their progress down the hall until they got into the elevator and the doors slid shut.

“He’ll be fine,” Gabby said dismissively when Danny came back in the room and shut the door. He glared at her, tossing the blanket back on the bed and searching around for his pants.

“Why did you call them?” Something in the tone of his voice made her eyes narrow.

“He’s not your responsibility, Danny. He helped you, and that’s wonderful, but you don’t owe him anything.” Gabby crossed her arms over her chest. “He obviously needs a lot of medical help and that’s for his _family_ to do. Not you.”

The thing was, she was absolutely right. He wasn’t Steve’s father or his brother or anyone else with a legal leg to stand on. But in an incredibly short amount of time he’d become Steve’s friend, the first one he’d probably had since whatever accident had broken his head. That would explain Steve’s pull towards him, but Danny didn’t have an excuse; he had friends, a life. And okay, maybe not a best friend per se, not like he’d had back in Jersey, but he’d only been in Hawaii for a little over a year; these things didn’t just happen instantaneously. Except when they did.

“He’s my friend, he trusted me.” Danny got dressed and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. “I made promises.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have. And you only just met him, you can’t possibly be friends. That’s not how it works.”

Danny spit into the sink. “I’m sorry, what? Aren’t you the one who said you took one look at me during that investigation and you _knew_ we were meant for each other? Love at first sight, do you remember that? That’s what you told me.”

Gabby threw her hands up, mouth twisted into an ugly sneer. “Is that what this is? _Love_? You told me that was just one time!”

He could only gape at her, hand fumbling to turn off the sink. Was she seriously going there? If he’d had any doubts about where things between them were going, they’d cleared right up. Looks like he was going to be single again.

“I can’t believe you’re bringing that up! It was a two-week fling in college! Christ, it’s not like I had some kind of tryst out the jungle! I could barely walk, I had to sleep in the back of a damned cargo plane. I ate _snake_!” He pushed past her and dug through his backpack until he found his phone. 

“Danny…”

“No. You don’t get to talk anymore. I’m going home, as soon as fucking possible, and I’m going to find Steve. Because yes, he _is_ my responsibility. And I think this thing we have here,” he waved a hand between them. “Is officially over.”

“You’re leaving me for _Steve_?”

“No, I’m leaving you because we don’t belong together. Because you don’t try hard enough with Grace, and you always, _always_ , put yourself first no matter what. I thought I could live with that, I really did, but I was wrong.”

He turned his back on her and placed a call to yet another woman who had never really understood him. He laid out the basic details of the situation to his ex-wife, had no compunction about begging, and she promised to get him out of Peru on the first available plane; he swore he’d pay her back, not caring to owe her if he didn’t have to. The whole time he was on the phone he could feel Gabby’s eyes boring holes in the back of his head. He supposed it wasn’t the smoothest break up he’d ever been a part of, but she’d crossed a line and he couldn’t even feel the slightest bit of sympathy for her.

“Have a good trip back,” Danny said as he finished packing and hefted his backpack.

“Fuck you,” Gabby replied.

He just shook his head and left. He never thought he’d be so happy to get back to Hawaii.

*o*o*o*

Danny came home from work and flopped face down on his couch. He’d just closed a nasty murder case, had been putting in crazy hours on it, and now he was ready to sleep for days. Meka had invited him over for beers, but he really hadn’t had the energy for it. Or the good humor.

It had been a month since his little adventure in Peru. He’d gone to see John McGarrett the day after he got back, but he was too late; a friendly neighbor said that a military escort had come to collect him and he hadn’t known how long John would be gone. Danny had called anyone he could reach that was Navy, or had connections with the Navy. It was always the same – he wasn’t family, he didn’t have clearance, blah blah blah. Stupid military red tape. He wished he had better contacts, the kind he’d had when he was still a cop in Jersey. 

Steve was always on his mind. His imagination gave him horrible images of Steve being ruthlessly interrogated, or of being wrapped up in a strait jacket in an institution somewhere. If only someone could tell him something, _anything_. He knew it was probably ridiculous of him to even be this worried after this long; maybe Steve had forgotten about him.

“Gah, enough!” Danny muttered to himself. He pushed up off the couch and got himself moving. Gun in the safe, check. Shower, check. Dinner…dinner…not so much. His fridge was depressingly empty. He thought he’d just get some take out, then remembered he’d have Grace in another few days and with a resigned sigh figured he should just suck it up and go to the store. Goddard’s would probably have those little rotisserie chickens, which he could stretch into two meals for himself.

He was gone for about an hour, returning with several bags to restock his food supplies. He didn’t remember eating everything, or even being home long enough to do so, but then he didn’t always keep very good track of himself. Once all the groceries were put away he sat down at his very small table with the whole chicken still in the plastic carry case; no sense bothering with a plate. He had to get up again when he forgot the beer, and that’s when he noticed he had a message on the answering machine. He pressed the play button and got only one step closer towards the fridge before freezing in place.

_Detective Williams? This is John McGarrett. I wanted to call and thank you for looking after my son. I’m hoping it isn’t presumptuous of me to ask a favor of you. Steve’s…he’s not doing very well. And I was hoping maybe you could come by when you have some free time. My number is 555-2399. I look forward to your call._

Danny dug around his junk drawer until he came up with a pen and an old receipt, and wrote down John’s number. He was so incredibly glad that the man had called, would run over right now if that’s what he wanted. He was embarrassed to see that his hand was shaking slightly as he dialed.

“McGarrett.”

“Uh, hi. This is Danny Williams. I just got your message.”

“Oh, Detective Williams. Thank you so much for getting back to me.” The relief in the man’s voice was palpable.

“No, thank you for calling. I’ve been wondering how Steve’s doing.”

John chuckled. “I heard you’ve been making quite a nuisance of yourself with the Navy.”

Danny blushed, glad they were having this conversation over the phone. “Yeah, well, they just barged in and marched him off and I…how’s he doing?”

“As you must be aware, he suffered a brain injury during his mission to Peru. He’s been seen by several neurologists and psychologists. The general consensus is that he has some cognitive issues, but nothing as severe as we first thought.”

“Cognitive issues?” Danny echoed, thinking of the times Steve would get that confused look on his face.

“Basically, it takes him longer to access certain bits of information, and there are some he can’t access at all. He doesn’t always know the right behaviors to use in certain situations. It’s harder for him to modulate his emotions and reactions. But he’s still Steve.”

Well, this was nothing Danny hadn’t already known, but he didn’t say that. “Your message said he’s not doing well?”

“He’s become incredibly withdrawn. For a while he was talking, mostly…your name. But now he won’t say anything. His therapist thinks it might just be all the changes and the additional stimulation of being around so many people again, but I just don’t know.”

Danny’s chest tightened at that. He remembered how happy Steve had been when he’d finally been able to say his name. “When should I come?”

There was silence for a moment on the other end. “I wasn’t sure you…I was hoping that, maybe, you’d be willing to help him.”

“He saved my life, Sir. I made some promises I didn’t get to keep, not then. I’d like another chance.”

“When is your next day off, Detective?”

“It’s Danny. And we just wrapped a big case, so I have the next two days off.”

“Could you…is after breakfast okay?”

“That’s fine. Great. I’ll be there around nine, then?”

“Thank you so much, Danny.”

The call ended and there was nothing but dial tone in Danny’s ear. He hung up the phone and then just stood there for a minute, grinning and feeling a little foolish for it. Finally he fetched his beer and attacked his dinner with enthusiasm.

*o*o*o*

Danny sat in his car outside the McGarrett place for nearly a half hour, waiting for nine o’clock. He’d slept like a rock the night before, though that probably was mostly due to exhaustion, but he’d woken early and had been too keyed up to sit around his apartment waiting. Not that this was much better. Would Steve be happy to see him? Indifferent? Maybe he wouldn’t remember; John did say his cognitive abilities kind of came and went.

As soon as the clock on the dashboard read nine he got out and hurried up the front walk. The door opened just as he was raising his hand to knock on it, revealing John McGarrett in a pair of faded jeans and an old HPD t-shirt. His craggy face looked softer than it had the last time Danny had run into him, and his eyes looked clear. This was a man who had gotten his life back together, and Danny was glad he’d had even a small hand in making that happen.

“Danny.”

“John.”

They shook hands, then John ushered him inside. Danny scanned the room, barely taking in anything but the fact that Steve wasn’t in it. He found himself listening, looking for a sign of the man. John watched him, amused.

“You’re really worried about him, aren’t you?”

“He’s a good guy,” Danny said with what he hoped was an offhand shrug.

John nodded. “He’s out back, on the lanai. I didn’t…he doesn’t know you’re here.”

“Oh. Okay.” He went in the direction John pointed him in, hesitating by the sliding glass door in the back. There were two whitewashed beach chairs out there, and Steve was sitting in one of them. He was faced away from the door, watching the waves break on the little beach further down the yard; he was slouched down so that Danny could only see the top of his head. He took a deep breath and went out.

He thought about what to say, how to approach, but in the end he just plopped himself down in the other chair. “Hey, Tarzan.”

Steve tensed up but didn’t turn to look at him. Danny poked him in the shoulder.

“Steve. Kala mai. I’m sorry, I tried to come with you. They wouldn’t let me.” He could only see part of Steve’s face, but it was enough to see that he was making that frowny, confused face. “I really missed you.”

That finally got his attention, and Steve turned to look at him, eyes bright with emotion. His hair was cut short and Danny missed the waves. Steve thumped himself on the chest, hard, and glared. Great. Back to charades.

“Steve, you need to talk to me. I know you can.” _Stay Danny’s_. That little phrase had been haunting him for a month.

“Not…stupid,” Steve said finally. He was red in the face, and his hand was clenched into a fist, which he tapped against his forehead. Danny hadn’t been expecting this reaction.

“Of course you’re not stupid! Who said you were?”

Steve reached out and grabbed his hand, jabbing at his ring finger.

“Ow! Stop that.” Danny pulled his hand back and sighed. Gabby. “She was wrong. I know you’re not stupid. There’s _nothing_ wrong with you.”

His only response was a frown. Danny sighed. He understood that Steve felt hurt, not only by what Gabby had said but probably by Danny’s absence in the last month. He likely didn’t understand that the military had kept him away. He grabbed hold of Steve’s hand and pulled on it, meeting resistance all the way, until he could press it to his own chest.

“Steve’s,” he said. “Stay Steve’s.”

Danny finally got the response he’d been hoping for when he suddenly found himself with a lap full of former Navy SEAL, his face buried in the crook of Danny’s neck. This was familiar, and warm, and just right. Danny rubbed his back and let himself relax back into the chair.

“Miss you,” Steve muttered, his breath puffing warm on Danny’s neck.

“I missed you too, you big goof.”

“Stay?”

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”

Steve pulled his head back, and gave Danny a quizzical look.

“That means yes. Danny stay.”

“Good.” And Steve beamed, his whole face lighting up. Danny couldn’t help but agree. _Very_ good.

*o*o*o*

“Come on, Danno!”

“I’d go faster if I had help,” he complained. He had two folding chairs hooked over one arm, a rolled blanket under the under, and was trying to juggle a cooler and an umbrella. Meanwhile, his daughter was running ahead, pigtails flying, chasing Steve down to the shoreline.

He grumbled good-naturedly while he got everything set up, then sat back under the shade of the umbrella to watch his two favorite people frolic in the waves. Grace was laughing, splashing Steve. For his part, the former wild man of Peru had filled out a bit since he wasn’t subsisting solely on fruit and random creepy crawlies; he looked healthy. Danny loved watching them play together.

Life had a strange way of taking a person right where they needed to be. He couldn’t help thinking that without that trip to Peru, he might now be married to Gabby. Maybe happy, probably not. Instead, he got washed down the side of a mountain and right into Steve’s life, and there were too many good things that came from that to even count them.

Half an hour later Steve and Grace came back, shaking water on him. Steve went right for the cooler, pulling out sandwiches and bottles of water. Grace sprawled on the blanket, eating and people watching. Steve sat in the chair next to Danny’s and handed him a sandwich.

“Mahalo,” Danny said. Steve grinned at him.

“Water is warm.” He used his hopeful, puppy dog face.

“Danno don’t swim,” Grace reminded him.

“Please?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Stop. Just…stop. With the face. After lunch, I’ll come in. Just a little!”

The unexpected capitulation had Steve kissing him fervently, one hand curled around Danny’s neck. 

“Oh, jeez!” Grace complained. “Knock it off, you’re embarrassing me.”

Danny smirked, pulling away. “I’ll remind you of that when _you_ have a boyfriend.”

“Eww.”

“Grace builds a castle?” Steve asked.

“We didn’t bring the bucket,” Grace reminded him patiently. “But next time we will.”

“Okay.” Steve took another bite of his sandwich, chewed thoughtfully. “Bury Danny?”

“No. And don’t push your luck, Tarzan.” Danny whacked him on the shoulder. “You’ll just have to content yourself with the ocean today.”

Their trips to the beach had become regular things; Steve always seemed happiest, most at ease, when he was in the water. He’d been indicating an interest in getting back on his surfboard, but Danny was waiting until he found a good instructor to make sure he remembered the basics; he hadn’t told Steve but he was contemplating lessons as well, something else they could do together.

Grace finished her sandwich in record time, then stood in front of him with her hand out. “Can I get a shave ice?”

“Is that absolutely necessary?” he teased.

“Danno…”

“Shave ice for Grace,” Steve said. He pulled his wallet out of the cooler and handed some money to Grace, looking smug as he did so. He received a very nice pension from the Navy, but recently had gotten himself a job at the animal hospital in Waikiki. Danny sometimes felt he could burst with pride at how well Steve was doing now. He was aware of his limitations, tried not to push himself too much, but each week seemed to get better control.

“Stop spoiling her,” Danny said, watching as his daughter ran over to the shave ice stand.

“Make me,” Steve challenged, a familiar glint in his eye.

Danny tilted his head to the side, like he wasn’t sure what Steve meant, and then he dropped his sandwich and flew out of his chair, heading for the water. Steve was in hot pursuit, laughing as he closed in on Danny with his ridiculously long legs. They hit the water at almost the same time, Steve grabbing him around the waist and trying to throw him off balance. Danny retaliated by putting his hands on Steve’s shoulders and trying to push him under the water. The pushing and shoving quickly turned to caressing and kissing as the waves foamed around them.

“Danny loves Steve?”

“Danny loves Steve,” he agreed. “Always.”

“Sorry,” Steve apologized.

“What f…” Danny choked on salt water when Steve knocked his feet out from under him. He came up spluttering, splashing water at Steve. “Dick!”

“Danny loves Steve’s dick.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Inappropriate.”

Steve’s expression clouded over for a minute, then he nodded. He pulled Danny close and this time whispered it in his ear. “Danny loves Steve’s dick.”

“Yes, I do,” he whispered back. “But this isn’t he place to talk about it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Steve grinned, gave Danny a messy kiss, then headed back up the beach to see if Grace would share her shave ice with him. Danny stood in the ocean, water lapping at his knees, and couldn’t help grinning. Life with Tarzan certainly was interesting.

“Have some!” Steve called over to him. Danny nodded and made his way to where his family waited. And thanked God for Peru.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** There I was, making a pile of copies at work, and whammo! Steve of the Jungle popped into my head and he was just too good to ignore. It’s a little bit Tarzan, a little bit George of the Jungle, and a whole lot of ab-riffic Steve. ::grins:: Let’s just picture that for a moment, shall we? Oh, yeah! Somehow I think I was also channeling Romancing the Stone. This should’ve been written as crack, but I’m not good at that. I had fun anyway. Hope you did too!
> 
> Steve’s traumatic brain injury has absolutely no basis in reality, like much of my life. LOL! Merely a plot device to make him extra huggy and less talky. This had the added benefit of requiring zero research, so yay for that.
> 
> The Sentinel fangirl in me couldn't help setting the jungle scenes in Peru and tossing in a jaguar. It's pavlovian at this point - say jungle, I think Jim Ellison. LOL!


	12. Merry Christmas, Here's To Many More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Standard Disclaimer:** I have no rights to the song below, just the knowledge that it's awesome and perfect for Steve and Danny. ::grins::

  
**Merry Christmas, Here’s To Many More,** Relient K

_I made it through the year and I did not even collapse_  
 _Gotta say, "Thank God, for that"_  
 _I'm torn between what keeps me whole and what tears me in half_  
 _I'll fall apart or stay intact_

_With tired eyes I stumble back to bed_  
 _I need to realize my sorry life's not hanging by a thread_  
 _At least not yet_

_So look at me now_  
 _Its finally Christmas and I'm home_  
 _Head indoors, to get out of this weather_  
 _And I don't know how_  
 _But the closest friends I've ever known are all inside_  
 _Singing together_  
 _Singing merry Christmas, here's to many more_

_It always hurt to be all by myself this time of year_  
 _A cold and lonely Christmas eve_  
 _And living out my days alone_  
 _Well that had been my deepest fear_  
 _But you promised you won't leave_

_Singing merry Christmas, here's to many more_  


* * *

Christmas used to be one of Danny’s favorite holidays. He loved having the family all together – parents, aunts, uncles, cousins – and he loved all the trappings of the season. The first Christmas he and Rachel spent together she was surprised, and possibly a little overwhelmed, by his enthusiastic attitude and insistence on decorating their apartment to within an inch of its life. It only got worse after Grace was born; that year they celebrated two weeks early because he just couldn’t wait.

Everything changed after the divorce. Christmas became a bargaining chip, something to be negotiated instead of shared. He almost never got Grace for a full day and so he had to cram everything into just a few hours. The holidays were endured instead of just enjoyed, until the happy memories started making Danny a little bitter.

He’d assumed the holidays would continue their downward decline when he followed Grace to Hawaii, where there was no big family gathering or even any snow, but he’d been surprised that first Christmas. His team, which had slowly become so much more than that, had come together to help give Grace a memorable Christmas after what could’ve been a completely disastrous case. If he was honest, Danny would admit that a lot of his personal enjoyment came from seeing how happy Steve was; his partner needed more days like that.

This year things would be different again. Rachel wanted Grace and Charlie to spend Christmas together, especially since it was Charlie’s first. In the end, Danny was able to get Grace for the five days between Christmas and New Year. It was a long time to get to spend with his daughter, but it wasn’t Christmas and he’d just about resigned himself to spending the holiday holed up in his apartment drowning his sorrows in eggnog, heavy on the rum.

Danny’s plans were foiled by Steve, who decided to host his first ever Christmas dinner party. He hadn’t shown any interest, was still determined to stay home and wallow, until he heard the menu.

“Roast pig?” he asked incredulously. “That’s not an appropriate Christmas dinner choice.”

“It is in Hawaii,” Steve pointed out. “Besides, it’s _my_ party.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “You’re right. Lord knows you can’t get a roast pig anywhere on the islands any _other_ day of the week.”

He went back to his paperwork, but couldn’t help muttering and shaking his head as Steve, Chin and Kono continued to plan. It was clear to him that Steve had never put a party together that wasn’t an extension of a night out at the bar, or a laid back barbeque.

“Do you mind?” Steve grumbled after a particularly loud huff from Danny.

“Hey, don’t pay any attention to me. I’m just the only guy working today.”

“Then work quieter. I thought you weren’t coming anyway.”

“I’m not,” Danny agreed. “Doesn’t mean I can just sit idly by while you plan what will possibly be the worst Christmas Eve dinner on record. I’d think you’d be more open to constructive criticism.”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” Steve glared.

Kono shook her head. “If _you_ were planning it, Danny, what would you do?”

And that was how Danny reluctantly found himself in Steve’s kitchen on Christmas Eve, preparing the Feast of the Seven Fishes.

*o*o*o*

“Why seven?” Kono asked, deveining shrimp in the sink.

“It’s a Catholic thing,” Danny said. He put the finishing touches on the salmon.

“If you don’t know just say so,” Steve remarked. 

Danny glared at him. He had a short fuse already today, angry that Grace was missing her traditional Christmas Eve dinner. He assumed Rachel and Stan would be dining on capers or filet mignon or something equally pretentious.

“Make yourself useful and take this.” He handed Steve the salmon, which would be grilled on a cedar plank. When Kono finished with the shrimp he’d toss them with garlic, butter and spices to bake them into a scampi. He referred frequently to the handwritten list pinned to the fridge so that he didn’t forget anything. 

Since he’d put himself in charge of most of the fish, he’d left the side dishes open for whoever wanted to make one. Mr. Healthful Virility had surprised him with a concoction consisting of cubed apples, chopped Snicker bars, and whipped cream. Steve had sheepishly explained it was something his mom used to make, and Danny’d been unable to rag on him too hard about it. 

“We’ve had fish on Christmas Eve as long as I can remember,” Danny told Kono while he set a pot of water boiling for linguini. “My parent’s house would be full of family and enough food to choke the Italian army.”

“Sounds like my Auntie’s house on the first Sunday of every month,” Kono replied. “We have to eat outside because there’s too many of us to fit in the dining room.”

Danny pulled out several tubes of crescent rolls, which would soon be transformed into garlic knots. “She does it every month?”

Kono nodded. “She likes having the family together. I’m done with the shrimp.”

They continued to work side by side, Kono taking over knots while Danny got the scampi put together. He’d learned his way around the kitchen mostly thanks to his mom, though his Pops taught him how to make a mean pot of chili. He felt a pang of nostalgia and wished he was back in his mom’s kitchen, but then Kono started telling him about some of the more memorable dinners hosted by her Auntie and soon he was distracted and laughing.

Chin and Malia were the first to arrive, bringing ahi and a broccoli casserole. Kamekona lumbered in wearing a red t-shirt bearing his likeness altered to look like Santa. Max brought a bottle of wine and a fancy looking trifle. Everyone wandered through the kitchen, greeting Danny, and Steve came back in to welcome everyone.

While the last of the food finished cooking Danny watched them all, leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. Malia was laughing, trying to figure out a seating plan while Max re-arranged the silverware. Kamekona had already installed himself at the head of the table, the seat with the most space around it. Kono and Chin bickered good-naturedly, arranging side dishes on the table. It felt like…home.

“Been a long time,” Steve said, coming up behind Danny.

“Long time?” He couldn’t believe how relaxed his partner was. It looked good on him. Of course, Danny thought he looked good any time, though he tried to never let on how much ogling he did during the course of a day.

“Long time since there was a Christmas party in this house.”

 _Not since my mother died_ was the unspoken sentiment. Danny bumped his shoulder into Steve’s, just to get a grin out of him.

“Thanks for inviting me.”

“I didn’t invite you. You invited yourself.” The grin turned into a smirk.

“Well, someone had to rescue your clichéd dinner. Roast pig? Really? You could’ve held it at the Hilton and got a free hula show.” Danny fought to keep a scowl on his face, though it was clear Steve wasn’t buying it.

“Hawaiian traditions aren’t cliché, Danny.”

“All I’m saying, _Steven_ , is that you occasionally need to embrace other cultures.”

“Since when is Jersey a culture?”

Danny opened his mouth to reply when a perfectly good garlic knot bounced off his head and hit the floor. Kono, looking completely unrepentant, stood with her hands on her hips.

“Can’t you two stop bickering for one day?”

Steve and Danny looked at each other, grinning. “No,” they said in unison.

The house filled with the laughter of their friends as they brought the last of the fish dishes out and took their places at the table. For a little while Danny forgot to be angry that Grace was missing out on it all.

*o*o*o*

Steve’s only after-dinner plans had included dessert and Hawaiian eggnog, which Danny was unsurprised to learn included pineapple juice. Everyone drifted into the living room, and Danny followed despite his protests about all the dirty dishes that needed to be dealt with.

“They’ll keep,” Steve said dismissively. “Come on, Danno. Relax. Have a rum ball.”

Danny shook his head. “I know Kono made those. Already had plenty of rum in the eggnog.”

In deference to the holiday Steve had done a minimal amount of decorating. A length of faux evergreen along the fireplace mantle, a little table top artificial tree that was mostly lights, and a surfing Santa figurine on the coffee table. There were desserts on every flat surface, from cookies to a pecan pie and Max’s trifle. Clearly it was going to take a while for anyone – well, except Kamekona who was already hitting the sugar cookies – to feel hungry enough to eat anything after the big dinner they just had.

“This is really nice, Boss,” Kono said, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Having the ohana together for Christmas.”

“We could take turns hosting each year,” Malia suggested. “That would be a fun tradition to start.”

Danny agreed. As much as he hated not seeing his daughter, having his new extended family together was really nice too. It didn’t stop him from having a fantasy of taking Steve back with him to Jersey one year, introducing him to a Williams family holiday with all the craziness that ensued. There’d be snow, a real tree, caroling, and his mom’s fish chowder; everything he’d grown up with. 

He looked over at Steve and saw him check his watch. Upon closer inspection Danny could see that, as relaxed as he’d been through dinner, he was now tense all through his shoulders. He’d always been able to read his partner pretty well when they were on a case, which was a good thing, but when it came to personal stuff Steve could contain himself so tightly that not even Danny could tell what was going through his Navy-addled brain.

“Alright, what’s going on?” Danny asked after Steve had checked his watch for the third time. He was clearly not listening to Max’s story of Christmas in the morgue – and that was something Danny wished he could erase from his brain – and he’d gotten antsier.

“What? Nothing!” And cue Guilty Face #2.

“Are we keeping you from something? You have a hot date?” Danny tried to keep his tone light and joking but he wasn’t sure he succeeded. Whenever he thought of  
Steve off with other people he got a stomach ache. 

“I don’t know…” Steve started to say in his own defense, but the doorbell sounded and he flew up out of his chair as if it had suddenly become electrified.

“Steve?” Chin asked, looking concerned. “Whatzit, brah?”

“Everyone stay put. No,” he said to Danny, who’d been in the process of getting up. “That means you too.” 

Steve disappeared and Danny exchanged a glance with Chin, who merely shrugged. 

“The Commander has secrets,” Kamekona said around a mouthful of cookie. Danny knew that was an understatement. Steve had countless secrets, some he’d never be able to share. He just hoped this was a good one and that it wasn’t Catherine in for a holiday hook-up.

They didn’t have long to wait; Steve was soon standing in the doorway, wearing a distinctly cat-and-canary expression on his face. He turned his beaming grin on Danny, who had to catch his breath as he always did when faced with that honest, unfettered McGarrett joy.

“I thought you might like to open one of your presents early,” he said.

Danny frowned. “And it just got delivered? Please tell me it’s not a live animal. Or, knowing you, live ordnance.”

“Better.” Steve moved aside, revealing Grace wearing a red Santa Claus dress trimmed in white faux fur, the requisite red hat on her head.

“Merry Christmas, Danno!” She ran into the room and jumped in his lap, giving him one of her patented monkey hugs. Danny hugged her back, unable to keep the grin off his own face, and looked over her shoulder at Steve.

“I knew you wouldn’t have a good Christmas Eve without her,” was the reply he received.

“He was very insistent.” For the first time Danny realized that Rachel was there as well. Which, duh, of course she would be. It wasn’t like Grace drove herself.

“But…Charlie.”

“He’s taking a nap,” Grace supplied. She slid off his lap to greet everyone else and snitch a cookie. “So we’re only here for a little while. But see, Danno? I dressed up like Santa this year to surprise you!”

“It’s a surprise, all right. You look beautiful.” Danny blinked tears out of his eyes, partly because his daughter was beautiful, inside and out, and partly because Steve had made sure he got to see her on Christmas. If he hadn’t already been crazy in love with the Neanderthal, this would have pushed him right over the edge. 

Grace and Rachel were only able to spend an hour or so, and Steve got everyone right to the business of opening gifts. The time passed too quickly, but it was full of smiles and laughter and the tearing of paper, so what they lacked in quantity they more than made up for in quality. It was the second-best Christmas present Steve could’ve given Danny, and he was starting to think maybe it was time to ask for the one thing he really, really wanted.

*o*o*o*

It was almost ten o’clock by the time everyone cleared out, returning to their own homes to finish out the Christmas holiday. Soon it was just Danny and Steve, and they ended up doing the dishes together. It was comfortable, the silence between them, and Danny felt so much lighter for having gotten to spend a little time with Grace.

When it was time for him to go he hesitated at the door. Despite everything he’d had a really good day. And now he didn’t want to go home to his empty apartment and think about the things he wanted that he didn’t have. Especially the one thing he desired above all others, who now leaned against the wall watching him with hooded eyes.

“Thanks, Danno. This has been the best Christmas I’ve had in a really long time.”

“Even considering some of the places you’ve probably been stuck in during the holidays, I’ll take the compliment.” Danny leaned himself, his back against the door. “And, you know. I had fun too. You really went above and beyond, bringing Grace here. Thank you.”

It wasn’t what he really wanted to say, which was how much he appreciated Steve’s constant reminders that he wasn’t alone here, that he’d somehow developed a second family that cared for him as if he were blood. He could’ve said it, _should’ve_ , but he didn’t want things turning all Hallmark Channel sappy.

“So, I should go.” He continued to stand there, weighing the cost of making a move versus just going home and not rocking the boat. Riding the high of the day and enjoying the feel of Steve’s gaze on him, Danny decided to go for broke. “You know, babe, it’s pretty cold outside.”

“What?” Steve went from vaguely sultry to confused.

“I really can’t stay.” Danny didn’t break eye contact with his partner, and had to keep from grinning when Steve’s face went blank momentarily as he searched his mental database to put the words into some sort of context; Danny loved that look, which he’d dubbed Data Retrieval.

“Babe, it’s _cold_ outside,” he said again, and finally there was a spark of understanding in Steve’s eyes. Sultry made a quick comeback, and there was nothing remotely subtle about it this time.

“Tonight was really nice,” Steve said. “Maybe one more drink for the road?”

“There might be talk tomorrow,” Danny cautioned. He tried to sound casual but inside he felt electrified. Steve was playing along with him, surely that meant what he thought it did.

“We’ve got no place to go.” Steve pushed off the wall. “I’ve got corn for popping.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Come on, Steve, we’re not doing _Let It Snow_.”

“Yes we are.”

“No, we were doing _Baby It’s Cold Outside_ , which clearly has more suggestive lyrics.”

“What difference does it make? It’s bad weather either way.” Steve’s brow was furrowed, a sign that he was put out by Danny making a fuss about something he found so clearly unimportant.

“Neither of those songs is about bad weather. This isn’t Greatest Hits for Meteorologists, Steven. I was trying to set a mood here, which was clearly too subtle for you.” Danny moved away from the door, arms in motion to emphasize what he thought about his partner’s inability to stick to a script.

“You’re setting a _mood_? What, are you trying to seduce me or something?” Steve sounded aggravated but his expression told a different story – equal parts fear, hope, and desire. Danny’s breath absolutely did _not_ catch when he saw his own longing reflected in his partner’s face. They’d always had a somewhat flirty friendship and he’d long suspected there could be more between them, but this was the first time he’d been certain.

“Maybe if you turn the lights down low,” he suggested. What the hell, one song was just as good as another. 

“Mind if I move in a bit closer?” Steve didn’t wait for a response before he filled Danny’s personal space. “Danno…are you sure?”

“You’ve been at the top of my Christmas list for the last two years, Super SEAL.” Danny reached out, grasping Steve by the hips and pulling him in even closer. “And I think I’ve been _really_ good this year.”

Steve looked like he had more to say but Danny was done talking. He put one hand on the back of Steve’s neck and pulled him down, stopping any further questions with his mouth. Once again his partner demonstrated the ease with which he was able to switch gears, going from tentative to full-out assault in the blink of an eye.

An easy press of lips quickly grew to involve tongues and teeth as Steve thoroughly plundered Danny’s mouth. There were an embarrassing amount of whimpers and moans that Danny was fully prepared to blame on his partner. In truth, he’d been dreaming of kissing Steve for ages and it was even better than he’d imagined it would be. He decided the best part of kissing Steve was that the man didn’t just use his mouth; it was a full body contact sport.

After what seemed like an eternity Danny pulled back and promptly turned to mush when Steve blindly tried to follow, to keep kissing him.

“Jesus, McGarrett.” He still had a firm grip on Steve’s hips but the other man’s hands hadn’t stilled; it was like he was trying to map every square inch of Danny’s body. Not that he was complaining. “Your mouth could be declared a lethal weapon. They teach that in the Army?”

“Mmmhmm.” Steve nuzzled Danny’s neck; he tried not to feel so smug at having reduced the SEAL to incoherence. 

Danny pushed at Steve, moving him in the direction of the couch. Once they were sitting, with Steve wrapped around him like an octopus, he made sure he had his partner’s undivided attention.

“Listen up, lothario. We are _not_ going to talk about this.”

“We’re not?”

“No. Not until the day after tomorrow. My Christmas wish is for us to make out like teenagers and save all the deep chit chat for later. Are you on board with that?” Danny stilled the hand that was carding through Steve’s short hair, not wanting to distract him.

“As long as that future talk doesn’t include the words mistake, leaving or over, I’m good.” The sincerity of his words, paired with the unexpected vulnerability in his eyes, melted Danny’s heart. He felt sure that if someone were to x-ray him right at that moment he’d be full of romantic movie tropes – butterflies, cupids, maybe even fuzzy kittens.

“I’m pretty sure there’ll be words along the lines of forever and dream come true,” Danny assured him.

“Okay then,” Steve replied before beginning a second wave of attack against Danny’s mouth. Danny willingly surrendered. Next year he’d insist on having Grace for Christmas, so he could celebrate with his two favorite people in all the world, and not just for an hour. Until that day, though, this was almost as good.

Steve detached from Danny’s lips, and pressed wet kisses along his partner’s jawline and along the curve of his ear. “All I want for Christmas is you,” he murmured.

“You’ve got me,” Danny said breathlessly. 

“You’ll stay?”

“No way you’re getting rid of me now, Steven.”

“Then I guess I was a good boy this year, too.”

“More likely Santa turned a very blind eye,” Danny chuckled.

“Hey Danno? Merry Christmas.”

Danny smiled fondly at his partner and best friend. “Mele Kalikimaka.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN** : Pure, unadulterated fluff, for which I offer no apology. ::grins:: I’m embarrassed to say that this fic has taken me an entire year to finish. I wrote the beginning and the end last year in the hopes of getting it done for a Christmas posting. But for whatever reason I never got around to writing the middle section. 
> 
> Joining WriSoMiFu in November really helped me get some writing done, and I decided to wrap this fic up so I could move on and deal with some others. Thanks to all my mifu supporters!


	13. The Main Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double drabble, warnings of drug abuse.

The syringe fell from Steve’s fingers and dropped to the floor. Danny scooped it up. He’d take it to the free clinic to be disposed of, anonymously.

It was wrong but he didn’t know how else to help Steve. The man had always been too tightly contained. He held on to everything: all his pain, all his perceived failures. When he’d reached critical mass the explosion had been spectacularly devastating.

Danny had tried to pick up the pieces but he couldn’t put Steve back together again. All he could do was help Steve lose himself for a while, aid and abet his chemical dependency.

“It’s okay, babe,” he said. He carded his fingers through Steve’s too-long hair, his chest hollow at the sight of his friend’s dopey grin and unfocused eyes. Danny wished he had the strength to stay away, instead of watching his best friend kill himself by inches.

He’d stay until Steve came back down, try to get some food in him, get him cleaned up. It wasn’t enough to counteract the addiction he’d been facilitating, of course. Nothing would be.

While Steve drifted, Danny tidied up the house and tried not to think about what he’d lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **AN:** So, this isn’t my usual kind of thing. It’s my first double drabble – writing something this short is incredibly foreign to me. And I also don’t normally write something so depressing. But I had a dream about Steve shooting up and Danny supplying the drugs and it just wouldn’t get out of my head. My brain is a strange and scary place sometimes.
> 
> And just FYI: All future fics in this fandom will be posted independently to make them easier to find, instead of filed away in here. Thanks so much for all the kudos, reviews and love!!


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